When I started out, I really wanted to do it this way too. A bare metal install just seemed a little crude, and I thought I might want to run other firewall related services from that node. I had technical issues, and OPNSense just didn’t want to run under Proxmox for me.

Finally, I said to hell with it and went with a bare metal install and, in retrospect, I’m glad it worked out that way.

OPNSense just works, and I don’t feel like there are any opportunities lost due to the bare metal install. Instead, it just feels really clean and sequestered from the homelab cluster as it should be.

I totally get the desire to want to muck about with Proxmox hosting and learn about how it works. That’s the right attitude. But hosting an OPNSense virtual machine isn’t the right starting place.

As a beginner, do beginner stuff. Install a Technitium container and learn about DNS. Install Immich, or Jellyfin or an *arr stack. But not a firewall as a VM.