There are many 3rd party VM appliance images available within the Azure Marketplace. Many of them offer Router, Firewall, and VPN solutions. One such solution is the pfSense for Azure VM image from Netgate.
To find “pfSense for Azure” in the Azure Marketplace, just follow the following steps:
- Navigate to the Azure Portal
- Click on the “+New” button in the upper left of the Azure Portal
- Type in “pfSense” into the Search box, and press Enter to search
- Click on “pfSense for Azure” to bring up the information about it
- Lastly, click the blue “Create” button to begin provisioning a VM with pfSense
The pfSense for Azure VM image does include free usage (aside from the cost of the Azure VM hosting) for shared core and single-core VM instances. There is a small hourly licensing charge per hour on larger VM instance sizes with a 1-month free trial available as well.
Here’s some additional information about pfSense for Azure as listed in the details of the VM within the Azure Marketplace:
pfSense for Azure delivers advanced routing, firewall and VPN for your cloud-based infrastructure. Much more than a simple gateway or firewall solution, this appliance will cut operating expenses by providing new options for security traffic engineering.
With pf Sense for Azure you can easily manage traffic in your cloud network as well as connect your Azure infrastructure to your remote networks, whether they’re on premise or in the cloud.
Stop paying for multiple Azure VPN Gateways by terminating multiple VPN tunnels on a single pfSense VM. You may also use the same appliance for secure remote access, and enable privacy and anonymity for end users. This appliance supports peer to peer tunnel operation with compatible devices, including other instances of pfSense.
About the Author
Chris Pietschmann
Chris Pietschmann is a Microsoft MVP, HashiCorp Ambassador, and Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) with 20+ years of experience designing and building Cloud & Enterprise systems. He has worked with companies of all sizes from startups to large enterprises. He has a passion for technology and sharing what he learns with others to help enable them to learn faster and be more productive.
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Hello Chris..
I have a question. How use a PfSense with HA? I use ILB or VIP NIC in PfSense?
I’m not too familiar with PfSense myself. Hosting it in multiple VMs should work well with a Load Balancer. You could try to contact PfSense for more information on hosting in Azure. 🙂
Hello Chris,
First of all, congratulations for your blog. I’ve learned a lot since I started to read.
I tried to deploy pfsense appliance using a MPN Subscription as well as EA but always I get the message – Not available for my region or subscription.
Have you get this kind of message?
Thank you.
Thanks, I’m glad you find my articles useful. 🙂
I’m not the most familiar with pfSense myself, but… The description for this marketplace image for pfSense says it offers a 1 month free trial. This would indicate that you need to pay a licensing fee to continue to use this VM after that period. It’s possible you’re getting errors provisioning it if you don’t have a Credit Card associated with your Azure Subscription. I’m not sure if this would be the case with EA subscriptions, but it’s something you could look into. If you continue to have issues, please contact Azure Support and/or Netgate directly.