Pfsense VM

[mackle]

I've made the move to Freenas 11, and now looking at virtualizing pfsense on it, so as to free up an extra box. Eventually I'll also virtualize my personal webserver over too, so that everything's working on server grade hardware and it doesn't have to run over a gbit LAN internally.

1. Would it be that much easier to start pfsense again from scratch? (it's a fairly vanilla installation)

2. Is it possible to convert existing PFsense image to VM? eg: would dd'ing screw up all the associations, or would pfsense ride it out...

Anyone know of a straightforward guide to actually achieving this?

 

[RyC]

Just do a fresh install and use the built in backup and restore functionality under the Diagnostics menu. It should restore pretty much everything (if you select backup everything). You may have to reassign the interfaces manually after restoring using the console though.

 

[mackle]

Great, that sounds like the best of both worlds,

Thanks!

 

[mackle]

Despite trying a few times (delayed more by a lack of spare time due to renovations), I haven’t managed to get the vm past the uefi shell - I suspect because the embedded image isn’t sticking properly when I dd the image. Or is there something stupidly simple I need to do to get it past the shell?

 

[Patrick]

With pfSense Gold there is a VMware image that works out of box.

 

[mackle]

I have sporadically been trying to add pfsense as a Bhyve VM on my FreeNAS11 box, I can now boot into pfsense which is a big improvement.

Does anyone have know of a good guide to configure the NICs in FreeNAS so that my two onboard NICs are WAN and LAN interfaces for my pfsense VM? And then how my underlying FreeNAS system would then connect to the network...

At the moment under the old UI I cannot select the NIC to add (the option doesn't show) and on the new UI it shows but always complains of a fatal error - see log, which I cannot find in the logs...