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    Possible to transfer config from VM to Netgate appliance?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
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    • M
      McDing
      last edited by

      Greetings :)

      I have an SG-4860 Netgate appliance.

      I am planning a complete reorg of my network and VLANs. I thought the 2.4.5 release would be a good opportunity to perform a fresh install of my 4860 (as in reset and start new). While everything is currently working fine, I have tinkered with it over the years and probably have activated some settings at some point I shouldn't have. So I'd rather start fresh...

      Because it takes some time to reinstall and configure everything, I was wondering whether I could do my fresh install in a VM, get all my DHCP assignments, VLANs, Radius and all configured and tested, then export the config to reimport it into my appliance.

      I assume it is not possible due to the fact that (among other things) the interface assignments wouldn't match and all, but, just in case, I am throwing the question out here in the forum.

      Is this somehow feasible?

      Thanks for any insights ๐Ÿ˜‡

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • R
        rpsmith
        last edited by rpsmith

        I'm not a VM guy but I routinely edit my xml config files to change the interface type before restoring it to a different hardware platform.

        Also, if you don't already have an xml editor, this is the free one I use: http://www.pnotepad.org/download/

        Roy...

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        • RicoR
          Rico LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance
          last edited by

          Generally speaking this works just without any problems. Check the docs https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/configuration-backup-and-restore.html

          -Rico

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
          • M
            McDing
            last edited by

            @Rico said in Possible to transfer config from VM to Netgate appliance?:

            https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/configuration-backup-and-restore.html

            Thank you both! That is great news ๐Ÿ‘

            While I have been backing my configs for a long time, I never had to restore them. So I wasn't aware of this feature:

            Configuration files can be restored to a completely different piece of hardware without issue. If the new target hardware has different NICs than the system where the backup was taken, a prompt will appear to re-assign the NICs after restoring the configuration.
            

            That is very helpful indeed! ๐Ÿ˜

            R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • R
              rpsmith @McDing
              last edited by

              @McDing
              I guess you learn something new every day. I always changed my config file before uploading it so I never saw this prompt to select new interfaces. Very Cool!

              Roy...

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