Has anyone tried running MikroTik inside VMWare ESX Server? I suspect this may be a good solution for enableing running of RouterOS on high end true server grade hardware with SCSI disks and hardware RAID redundancy and other server grade features (such as remote managment cards).

I'm thinking this may be a good solution for large ISPs that are considering switching off of large Cisco routers for core and BGP routers.

Something to think about.

Good things for MT as a Virtual Server

-- Cela compliance server, storage of data etc.

Can't think anything else

If you need something more powerful try the http://www.mikrotikrouter.com, else, I would not think you could do much "routing" with a Virtual MT.

Could be wrong.. What else can everyone think that a MT as a virutal server would be a good thing.

I tried using VMWare Server (Free Edition) and running 2.9.x... I ran into small issues with interfaces just slowing down or stopping all together. I don't know if it was an issue with VLANs inside of Intel VLAN stuff or what. I plan to try again. I mainly would like to use it as a VPN concentrator and small customer firewall.

I would assume with an 8 CPU box and Intel PCI-E nics you could get some pretty good performance for < 100mbps stuff. If using VMWare tell it that it's a 64bit OS and you will get Intel nic drivers instead of the older vmware nic.

I was thinking it could be a good way to run MikroTik on some higher end hardware, fiber NICs, RAID controllers for disk redundancy and other such advanced hardware that VMWare will support that MikroTik does not, and ESX will perform the hardware abstraction and present that to MikroTik as a standard piece of supported hardware. My thoughts are for things such as large VPN/PPPoE concentrators or BGP routers for large scale mission critical networks, or anyother aspect that you require full hardware redundancy at every level.

it's nothing that I need myself for any application, it was just an interresting idea I wanted to present for discussion.

Discussion is good!

I would think though that this type of setup would be more complicated and therefor more prone to failure. You can do quite a bit with a pair of 532s! Put something else behind it, like a poweRouter and now you are smoken. I hope the VRRP support in v3 will be VERY nice, including config transfers. If that happens, look out!

On the RAID5, again, 64meg Flash card and run the entire OS. whats the failure point of them ?
The Fiber NICs would be nice, as I have yet to find a PCI 32-bit 10/100 Fiber NIC, and there is no 1000meg Fiber nics unless they are PCI 64 bit or more common, PCIExpress.

I've had no issues running ROS 2.9.x on VMware Server for Windows, but I mostly use it for testing rather than production. Although I love VMware, I don't think I'd use it for MT in production unless I was using MT to protect the VMs from the LAN (or vice-versa).

It's definitely functional.

I'm an Xen user rather than a VMware user. I just got a CPU supporting hardware virtualization, and haven't tried MT on it yet. This is how I see MT potentially useful as a guest OS.

1. Software firewall. There is no real firewall between guest OS's, except for the OS's software firewalls. MT could fulfill this role. A business could run an MT firewall to the Internet, office file server, and IP phone system all on the same box.

2. Testing/Learning - want to test how 6 mikrotiks would work together in a ring configuration testing networking failovers? Want to setup a radius server and 4 mikrotiks and make them work together? Want to test/learn OSPF, BGP or other routing protocols hands on? You could potentially do it all on one PC with virtualization, not touching a single patch cable, installation CD, power strip, or gathering of "test machines" of dubious origin or quality.

3. Hardware compatibility. As others have mentioned, to provide choices for storage, backup, redundancy, etc.. An MT router instance could be duplicated and running on another machine in no time in the event of hardware trouble, simply by having a shared copy of the OS's partition file. Backups would be accurate and easily restorable and usable, which can be hard to do with MT itself. I could preconfigure MT on one machine, zap it over then network somewhere, and start it up for it's task on another machine.

4. Distribution. MT could be preconfigured for various tasks, and sold as a ready to run virtual machine image that doesn't need installation.

Virtualization is kinda spooky. It turns a physical operating system on a piece of storage in a particular computer into a "spirit" that exists temporally or can be moved around from box to box with such ease, duplicated with ease, destroyed with ease, started and stopped over the network from afar, etc... So very much different than trying to make an OS install onto a particular computer at a particular time.

rather than running as a fallover.. is there any high-availability protocol that allows for router load balancing as well?
I say this relating to load-balancing something like the mikrotik hotspot config, as I don't see any easy was this could be done without just separating networks.

Could also be a clustering solution, but similar to the whole vmware setup in that theres a floating system running across a number of machines.

Hi,

I've a 2.9.45 running as backup BGP Router under VMWare Server.
Runs for 67 days (since the upgrade to 2.9.45). BGP Link is up for
67 days. Machine is a P4 2,8GHz. Runs like a charm.

Vmware gives an extra in flexibility. Not bothering with hardware
or cabling. You've allways the same virtual hardware.
So I can take this virtual box and copy it to a second machine
and start it over. No need to leave my chair.

As I've heard ESX will implement an online-Disk-migration in the future.
So you can move a router from one PC to another without interruption
and without the help of a SAN. That's definitive the way to go.

Stefan

ste: This is the type of implementation I was thinking of originally. I have used MikroTik and Virtual PC before on my laptop to do some interresting routing setup's (bluetooth EVDO connection to my cell phone, mikrotik using shared wireless interface on laptop to connect to wireless ap with no internet connectivity, and allowing other laptops to connect to the wireless and route through my laptop, while doing rate limiting and giving myself priority on the connection.)

If anyone has a copy of ESX server, and is willing to do some testing / validation I would be curious to verify it works correctly.

I would think that the automated point in time backups of the system would be an incredibly valuable tool for people as well, and the hardware abstraction inherrant in virtual machines should allow greater stability across wider variaty of devices as MikroTik no longer needs to worry about supporting an obscure network card, as long as VMWare can interface that card, MikroTik has full support for it. This may not work in all situations (think syncronous and wireless packages) but for pure routing / hotspot / vpn / pppoe systems it has some real advantages.

Piece of cake to get running on xen. Downloaded the iso, created a blank 200MB file for the fake hard drive , let opensuse boot the iso and install onto the hard drive file. Had it running as a vm guest in about a minute. Networking works.