pfsense CE device to Netgate 8200
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We're considering upgrading to a Netgate 8200 by replacing our current pfSense CE device.
Can we transfer the configuration from our pfSense CE box directly to the Netgate 8200 by backing it up and then restoring it?
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The exported config contains little, but very important device depend information : the selection of the interface names by their driver name, like 'em0' or 'igc2' or 'ix3'
You can see them here :
Your real question is : does my CE uses the same network hardware as the 8200 ?
Btw : a device backup is meant to be restored to that very same device.
Like a disk image backup from "a PC" to another "PC" will ... well, never work, just think about the license stiff, all the little nifty hardware differences, etc.That said, importing is probably as simple as :
Open the backup up config file in a good text editor (no, not Word), use Notepad++.
Example :
On your CE you were using 'em0' as a WAN and 'em1' as a LAN.
This was the situation I had myself before, when leaving a CE a,d going to a Netgate 4100 :
You can see the interfaces section :
I had to replace 'em0', my CA WAN, for 'ix3'
And 'em1', my CE LAN to 'igc0', my 4100 LAN.
And done, this was enough : I imported this fileo my 4100, and it rebooted and things work fine .....Well, somewhat fine, after some I decided to set my 4100 up clean, from the ground up, using the config file from my CE as a visual guidance. There were also a lot of system related config settings , graphs and so on that were actually device depended.
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Thank you for the quick reply!
I will try to change the interface assignment since I have more than 100 VPN clients.
Again, Thank you!
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Yup you can usually just import the config and it will ask you to reassign the interfaces. However if your CE device has the same NICs it may simply apply directly without giving you the opportunity to re-assign which can be confusing.
If you have a lot of VLANs or other subinterface types it can be much easier to manually edit the file.
You can also open a ticket with us to have the config converted so it will just import directly:
https://www.netgate.com/tac-support-request -
