With over 10 million deployments across homes, small businesses, enterprises, service providers, and governments, pfSense® is the world’s leading open-source-driven firewall, router, and VPN solution for network edge and cloud secure networking.
Netgate has published the Release Candidate of pfSense Plus software version 24.03. As we prepare for the GA release, we invite you to try out the Release Candidate and share your feedback with us. Release notes are available for review.
Significant changes in this release include an improved update process using ZFS snapshots, the ability to export packet flow data, an enhanced gateway recovery process, and changes to the default state policy for increased security. The release also addresses several bugs and other issues.
Packet Data Flow Export: A notable addition to this release is the capability to export packet flow data to external collectors via the NetFlow v5 or IPFIX protocol. This feature enables administrators to extract valuable insights from network traffic, which is essential for effective network management. By analyzing flow data, administrators can address various challenges such as optimizing application response times, implementing usage-based accounting, profiling traffic patterns, fine-tuning traffic engineering strategies, detecting potential security threats or intrusions, monitoring Quality of Service (QoS) metrics, and much more. This enhancement equips administrators with powerful tools to enhance network visibility and make informed decisions regarding network performance and security.
Additionally, we're focused on reducing processing overhead and enhancing performance by updating the IPsec-MB kernel module (iimb.ko) to Intel's latest upstream version 1.5. This update includes optimizations for CPUs supporting AVX512 and AVX2, ensuring smoother operations and improved efficiency. These advancements aim to elevate user experience while maintaining high-performance standards.
Netgate has a detailed Upgrade Guide available in the pfSense documentation to help explain the process. Below are the high-level steps to perform the upgrade.
Upgrades from an earlier version of pfSense Plus software are usually made through the user interface. Before any major change, such as an upgrade, it’s always recommended to save a backup of the pfSense Plus configuration. You can find Backup and Recovery instructions in the pfSense documentation.
Navigate to System > Update
Set Branch to “Next Stable Version (24.03-RC)”
Click Confirm to start the upgrade process
We encourage you to migrate from pfSense CE software to pfSense Plus software. Doing so will ensure you have access to all of the benefits of pfSense Plus software. You can find details on how to get pfSense Plus software here.
To mitigate the risk of disrupting your production environment, Netgate recommends testing the RC version in a lab, on a scratch system, or in a Virtual Machine rather than on production systems. Please review the documentation on Troubleshooting Upgrades for the most up-to-date information on working around upgrade issues.
We encourage you to test the things that are important or unique to your deployments. Please report any errors or concerns in the Plus 24.03 Development Snapshots category of the Netgate Forum. Depending on the issue, we may ask for more details or for you to open a bug on redmine.pfsense.org.
Include as much information as possible in your reports, such as console error messages, full PHP errors, the system configuration file (sanitized, if necessary), information from the text dump, etc. A full-text dump might contain sensitive information, so be sure to inspect it before posting.
We want to express sincere thanks to all users willing to test this RC release. Your community involvement is essential to making Netgate's pfSense Plus product a stronger solution for everyone.
A more detailed roundup of the update will be included with its full launch.