Guidance on Upgrading pfSense Virtual Appliance CE → Plus
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Hello all,
I’m looking for some clarification and best practices on upgrading a pfSense Community Edition (CE) virtual appliance to pfSense Plus.
The current CE instance is fully up to date, but the underlying virtual appliance was originally deployed several years ago. I’d like to understand whether it’s possible, and advisable, to perform an in-place upgrade to Plus, or if there are any known gotchas or compatibility concerns when upgrading older CE deployments in a virtualized environment.
Alternatively, if I decide to deploy a fresh pfSense Plus VM, can I import the existing CE configuration directly? How far do I need to go in preconfiguring the new instance (e.g., defining interfaces, assigning NICs, etc.) before importing the CE config?
Lastly, I’ve seen mention that pfSense Plus registration codes are one-time use. Can anyone confirm whether those codes can be reused for test/dev environments, or if each deployment requires a new code?
Appreciate any guidance or recent experience others might have with this process.
Thanks,
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@senox Each install has a unique NDI based on hardware and the license ties to that. The NDI changes in particular when changing NICs. So if you don’t change much in the VM the license will continue to work.
You can restore to a later version so normally CE to Plus is no problem. https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/restore-different-version.html
