Virtualization

pfSense® software supports a variety of Type-1 (bare metal/native) and Type-2 (hosted) virtualization environments, such as VMware (vSphere, Fusion or Workstation), Proxmox, VirtualBox, Xen, KVM, Hyper-V and so on.

Warning

We recommend using Type-1 hypervisors for production use. Type-2 hypervisors such as VirtualBox or VMware Workstation work fine for testing, but avoid using them for production roles where possible.

Set up and install is straightforward and similar to set up on a physical machine using a full installation from an ISO image.

• Using the VMware Appliance
• Installing VMware Guest Tools
• VirtIO Driver Support

Guides

• Virtualizing pfSense with VMware vSphere / ESXi
• Installing pfSense Software on vSphere 6.x using vSphere web client
• Installing pfSense Software on vSphere 5.x using vSphere client
• Virtualizing pfSense with Hyper-V
• Virtualizing pfSense with Proxmox