pfSense

Hello pfsense!

The pfsense project should make it easy to provision pfsense by publishing an official pfsense vagrant box. Users could then start up a new pfsense vm with just a couple of console commands.

Normally, the process of evaluating pfsense in a VM involves loading an ISO and going through the installation process. While this process is more convenient in virtual hardware, it would be better if users could skip the OS install process and get straight to using pfsense. This is where vagrant [0] comes in; vagrant allows developers to boot a pre-packaged VM with a pre-installed operating system and default configuration.

Some projects already publish vagrant images: FreeBSD has published vagrant base boxes for their releases [1]; it wouldn't take much effort for pfsense to follow in their footsteps.

Allowing developers to provision a pfsense appliance instance with just a few console commands would make it easier to evaluate pfsense's browser UI, test new pfsense configs before deploying them, and possibly, even test pfsense itself. I hope the pfsense project will consider publishing a vagrant base box!

More information on packaging an OS installation for vagrant can be found here [2].

[0] https://vagrantup.com
[1] https://atlas.hashicorp.com/FreeBSD/
[2] https://www.vagrantup.com/docs/boxes/base.html