For virtual environments (VMware ESXi, Proxmox, Hyper-V, VirtualBox), the extracted ISO should be mounted to the virtual machine's virtual CD/DVD drive. The VM should be configured with a network adapter in or VirtIO format.
The ISO is compressed using GZIP ( .gz ) to minimize download bandwidth and requires specific handling during the installation phase. pfsensece280releaseamd64isogz upd
Searching for pfsense ce 2.8.0 release amd64 iso gz upd suggests you might be looking for an , not a fresh install. For virtual environments (VMware ESXi