Netgate Cfg file interoperability between different models

Networking & Firewalls
1

Just watched the latest video
" Which Hardware to Choose For pfsense? Netgate VS Protectli, Qotom, Yanling, etc…" video.
Which Hardware to Choose For pfsense? Netgate VS Protectli, Qotom, Yanling, etc... - YouTube (thanks Tom)

Like Tom, I have moved away from non-negate devices for commercial environments and have found their devices to be rock solid in terms of reliability.

I’m just wondering if anyone has had to replace a troublesome netgate device with a newer model and have you encountered any gotchas. I’ve a few 3100s in production. They are not being sold any more and I was wondering if I could take the 3100 cfg file and load it on to say a 2100 and ship it to the client.

Ideally I would like to test this but I don’t have a 3100 to hand and was just wondering if

  1. the cfg files are interoperable between different models
  2. has anyone else done this and if so, have they encountered any problems?
2

Bouncing between different computers and NIC cards, the most I’ve had to do is edit the network interfaces in the backed up config file. It’s just a text file so no big deal to edit and save it.

1 Like
3

Thanks Greg.
Good to know! :+1:

4

You don’t even need to do that. If the NIC’s are labeled differently i.e. em0 or cxgb0 then when you go to restore the console will ask which interface do you want to assign to the WAN, LAN and so on.

If they are the same name then its simple enough to move the interfaces to a new port on your new device in the GUI. Its pretty painless.

2 Likes
5

Netgate TAC has been very responsive when I needed the config files converted. (When we attempted to do it ourselves, we screwed it up every time, mostly because the port labeling is obscure.