Looking for Guided Video on Setting Up Netgate Nexus Controller (incl. Firewall Rules)?

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Hi everyone,

I’m trying to get the Netgate Nexus Controller up and running, and was wondering if anyone knows of a good step-by-step video guide that walks through the process.

What I’d love to see covered is:

  • How to turn on and set up the Nexus Controller.

  • Any firewall rules that need to be added so the connection works properly.

  • How to connect and manage different pfSense Plus instances through the controller.

  • Tips for best practices (like keeping access secure and making sure everything is licensed/activated correctly).

I’ve looked at the official Netgate blog and the documentation, but a guided video would really help me (and probably others) follow along more easily.

If anyone has come across something like this on YouTube or elsewhere, I’d really appreciate a link!

Thanks in advance.

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This might go into the Video suggestion category. @LTS_Tom has been looking to do some more pfsense videos :wink:

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I would say doing this type of video may be hard unless you have a couple of PFSense firewall laying around.

Recording this type of video , may shown clients sensitive data

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I do plan on making that video at some point, but I have not really had time to set it up and test it.

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Thanks, Tom! I completely understand—looking forward to the video whenever you get the chance to make it. I’ve been a fan of your work for years and really appreciate the time you took to respond.

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I’ve watched Netgate’s videos that they’ve put out about Nexus but none of them seem to tell you what you can actually do. As an MSP with multiple clients I don’t need a central interface that can apply the same firewall rules across a bunch of different firewalls, but what I do need is central management of updates. I don’t know if that’s possible and easy to do or schedule through Nexus because they don’t tell us.

If anyone knows what things you can actually do with the GUI version, that would be awesome to know. The API might be of interest, but I don’t know anything about Python and I really don’t have time right now to learn how to use API calls in a Python script.

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There is not really much to talk about with Nexus. I did cover it in this video

And here is the documentation

The way it works is you choose a pfsense system you want to be the host for the instances to connect to such as the one at your office. Then all the other systems you want to manage can join to that Nexus system running on that host. Each system joining requires a $49 per system per year license.

Nexus features in the Nexus UI

  • Status of all attached firewalls
  • Admin the for all firewalls attached
  • Update & version status
  • Open remote interactive consoles similar to an SSH connection

And that is really it, I did not see and there is no documentation for doing mass rule changes across all firewalls or building out any policy templates. The Nexus system is very basic and only offers the mentioned features.

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So basically, way less functionality for what I already have set up with OpenVPN connections to administer and it costs me $49 a month per firewall. Yeah, that’s pointless, lol. Thanks for the summary, though.

I already have status information with Uptime Kuma. Unless they’re planning on building out more functionality in the future, I really don’t know why anyone would pay for this.

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Yeah, I could do a video to complain about what it can’t do but that seems like a waste. Maybe there is a future when it does more but I am not clear on the roadmap as they don’t put it out there. It feels really basic for how long they were building it.

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