Multiple VMs with individual VPNs

VPN
1

I have been doing homework on VPNs and VMs but I couldn’t find a solid answer or at least one that pertained to my situation. I have very shallow knowledge of both including networking as my forte lies better in programming.

My goal is to run multiple VMs, potentially up to 20 each VM with an individual VPN connection for data mining. Reason for so is to gather abundant resources to process through while I get my hands dirty with machine learning.

I have 2 servers currently used for database simulations:

Server 1: Dual Intel Xeon E5-2670 v1, 128gb ddr3, on quad NIC supermicro board with (6) pcie 8x ports and raid 10 (8) intel s3500 160gb SSD through LSI 9260-8i raid controller. Boots off of a samsung 120gb 850 evo. Current has Windows server 2012 R2 (datacenter) installed.

Server 2: Single E5-16xx v3, 32gb ddr4, dual NIC, (8) Samsung 2Tb HDD in raid 5 through LSI 9260-8i, Boots off of dual (2) intel-x25e 32gb raid 1 and also Windows server 2012 R2 (datacenter).

I have currently (2) PIA accounts giving me 10 available slots to assign to VMs, I plan to purchase more if I can get better clarification for my goals.

I am neither bound to OS as I can as easily install a Linux distro or keep Windows if one provides significant advantage over the other. My current router is Netgear Nighthawk R7000, which 2 LAN ports are occupied by the server. I am looking into purchasing a gigabit switch to expand to my needs. Current ISP is Verizon Fios 150/150.

If you stuck with me this far I am thankful.

My questions are:

Using NAT does not seem useful in my case as they would still route through the host IP would the next best be bridging?

If bridging goes through the host’s controller would I be able to get ‘unique’ instances of using a VPN per NIC port?

My visualization for this is something along the times of: Router => switch => individual NICs on the server. I have no issues with acquiring more NIC adapters if so far there are no issues.

Is this feasible with the stock router firmware? DDWRT ? Or more complex solutions like pfSense setup.

Very new to networking so forgive me for any lack of understandings.

2

My questions are:

Using NAT does not seem useful in my case as they would still route through the host IP would the next best be bridging?

If bridging goes through the host’s controller would I be able to get ‘unique’ instances of using a VPN per NIC port?

I’m not sure that I understand your questions. Can you clearly state what you are trying to accomplish or avoid with each VM so that the NAT/Bridging questions have more context?

Are you trying to avoid double NAT? What bridging are you talking about? OpenVPN bridging or bridged adaptors for each virtual machine? What do you mean by getting unique instances of each VPN?

Are you saying you are going to have 20 physical NIC’s on your box? Unless this is going in a data center with connections to fat pipes, you can probably accomplish whatever you need by using virtual adaptors.

3

I am web scraping and I need to have separate IPs for multiple instances of the program I use. However if too many concurrent requests come from a single IP it increases the chance of having the IP banned. These are primarily text/links/inner html so they are small file sizes which means a lot of requests.

NAT does not allow for outside access which is a minus and still goes through the host’s IP which I am unsure whether extra NIC cards would allow requests, under a VPN, to be masked by the VPN so it does not seem to be all coming from a single IP, my home’s IP.

Bridging would give me outside access and if having more NICs would allow me, to send requests anonymously, or from another IP, then I would be able to accomplish my goal.

Basically I need to know whether having multiple NICs, VMs bridged to an individual NIC, going through my router and through my ISP would give me anonymity for each VM request to a site.

I am unsure whether virtualized NICs would offer the same as physical NICs for internet access despite piping packets through the host’s NIC.

My boards already have 4 gigabit ports built into the boards and quad NIC cards are cheap enough. Each of my boards contain 6 pcie so I can potentially get 28 ports each if it came down to it.

TLDR: Do VPNs offer masking per subnet virtualized/hardware NIC or just what ever exits out of my router?

4

NAT does not allow for outside access which is a minus and still goes through the host’s IP which I am unsure whether extra NIC cards would allow requests, under a VPN, to be masked by the VPN so it does not seem to be all coming from a single IP, my home’s IP.

If you are using a VPN, they will not see your home IP at all, only the IP of the VPN node you are connected to. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘NAT does not allow for outside access’.

Bridging would give me outside access and if having more NICs would allow me, to send requests anonymously, or from another IP, then I would be able to accomplish my goal.

Basically I need to know whether having multiple NICs, VMs bridged to an individual NIC, going through my router and through my ISP would give me anonymity for each VM request to a site.

You don’t need to purchase extra physical NIC’s. If you have twenty VM’s running and each one is connected to a different VPN endpoint, each one will have that corresponding servers IP while making requests online. This is true regardless of whether you have 20 physical boxes with their own separate NIC’s, or with 20 virtual machines with virtual adaptors.

I am unsure whether virtualized NICs would offer the same as physical NICs for internet access despite piping packets through the host’s NIC.

As far as your IP concerns, you are covered with virtual NIC’s. Depending on the volume and frequency of your traffic needs, the NIC may become a bottleneck, but hold off on purchasing anything unless it is needed.

TLDR: Do VPNs offer masking per subnet virtualized/hardware NIC or just what ever exits out of my router?

Your VPN is not limited to just “whatever exits out of your router”. You can have VPN and non-VPN traffic at the same time. The VPN provider doesn’t care whether you are connected with expensive 10GbE cards or VirtualBox adaptors, you will still get the servers IP.

5

Is it better to run all my server traffic through the vpn or just the vm traffic I want to keep secure? I am also looking to run vpn on the server for remote access. This all very new to me.

6

I personally only run my vm traffic through the VPN. Your needs and goals may differ.