Comment on Router died - Replacement/solution recommendations
BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info 3 months ago
As for backup, you can also buy a e.g. Lenovo M920q minipc, buy a pci-e riser, buy a dual port ethernet card, set up an pfSense (or OpenWRT) VM, pass-through the ethernet card directly to the VM. The VM is very backupable, since you just copy the VM state and save it somewhere. This would only work for the router though, since the AP’s that’d be running OpenWRT wouldn’t be VMs.
I guess the problem you’re asking about in regards in regards to cross-device portability of a backed up config is valid. If you had a four ETH port router, backed up the config, and then uploaded it on a two ETH port router, you’d run into trouble, but I have no experience here.
You can also install OpenWrt on some switches these days (PoE also reportedly works with realtek-poe module):
That way you’d have a fully open OpenWRT-only network lab, so you’d always be working with the same system.