CLONE PFSENSE 2.03
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I have a pfsense box working at a school with about 100 users. The box has been stable for about 14 months. I want to make a backup device for immediate replacement incase the box fails due to hardware. I have all the additional hardware available as per specs of the first box. How can I clone the harddisk of the first pfsense box to a new similar sized harddisk such that immediate replacement of the harddisk is available in case of failure.
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As I went through the thread I understand it is easier and faster to reinstall and restore config.xml to the second harddrive but does this method automatically install all packages and rules associated to them. Say for eg I have squid + dandguardian + sarg + nut + cron.
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You might consider trying clonezilla (clonezilla.org). I have been using it a long time now without issues. And it's open source.
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how long does clonezilla take for a 500gb hdd. Does it do a raw copy?
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It depends on whether you are doing a clone over the network or to an attached drive. With a second drive attached it should be a lot faster obviously, usually about as long as it takes to format a drive that size. A 40 Gig drive usually is around 20 minutes over the network.
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As I went through the thread I understand it is easier and faster to reinstall and restore config.xml to the second harddrive but does this method automatically install all packages and rules associated to them. Say for eg I have squid + dandguardian + sarg + nut + cron.
As I understand it yes, it does. I tried it twice, but it didn't work out for me; it kept on installing and deinstalling and installing. Which made me conclude it is sort of 'macro-wise' replaying all config changes done (or something like that, I am still a noob ;D).
I ended up doing fresh installs. What I could recommend is backup all sections of the config individually (see GUI); that did come in handy for me for restoring the static IP's in my LAN's. For the remainder, I just manually reinstalled everything.
