pfSense Backup Restore

Is the pfSense backup XML config file hardware agnostic? Can I use the XML file to restore all the router setup and settings to completely new hardware and mirrored hard drives? Thanks in advance!

It is pretty much hardware agnostic. You will have to re-map the interfaces after you restore, at least if the names are different.

Ah, that’s a good point. I think once a fresh copy of pfSense is installed and mirrored on the new drives, there is a prompt during setup to assign my WAN and LAN to whatever the nic interfaces are called. It’s been a while since I’ve installed a fresh copy of pfSense. I’ve been running this software for nearly 10 years with zero issues and now it’s time to upgrade to some newer hardware.

I agree. I recently moved from a white box to a Netgate 6100. All I had to do is re-map the interfaces - only needed in one place in the .xml file - restore and everything worked.

Better yet: edit the backup XML and change the NIC names to reflect the new interfaces, then import that configuration.

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