Hey,
I’m a bit confused about the abilities and licensing of virtual RouterBoards (CHR and classic x86 ROS). But lets begin with the environment:
There is a isolated network (no Internet access) with VMWare ESXi servers. The plan is, to use this servers to install some Routerboards, instead of using Mikrotik Hardware Routers.
At first sight the CHR should be the best choice, because it’s build to run virtualized. But after consuming the licensing information from help.mikrotik.com, there is a problem with CHR licenses: “A running CHR instance will indicate the time when it has to access the account server to renew it’s license.”
That’s a problem, if there is no internet access :-/
Is there a CHR “offline activation and runs forever” license?
Is it possible to use the classic x86 ROS version with the appropiate license in a virtualized environment, or are there any flaws, that I have to be aware of?
CHR need license renewal periodically. Don’t know your environment but you can do it behind nat and allow something like license.mikrotik.com if you concern security.
Beside that both x86 and chr were same as an os but chr contains virtual machine client tools, license transferable to another chr if you wish and some differences at license level.
That’s unforunate, because I can only use the x86 version. Maybe the performance is affected without the vm client tools. Have to try it. There is no way (and will never be due to security reasons) to access the Internet. It’s a total isolated network ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Used both at ESXI and didn’t notice any performance issue so far. But can’t promise future releases.
If you follow x86 path, few things you have to consider like pick proper disk size for operating system.
After licensing you can’t expand operating system disk size. Otherwise you will loose license.
Beyond the license, I’m not sure X86 would have the virtual tool helper that CHR does. So heartbeats, stats, KVM integration, etc. may not work with X86…
But never tried X86 on ESXi, so maybe VMWare tools do work with it too… Just something to test/consider here.
so we got hold of an old R910 with 4 cpus. Each 10Core/20threads total 40core/80threads 2.8Ghz speed intel xeon
We have decided to give it a go on RouterOS V7 x64 direct install on the machine, my only doubt now is the fully compatible 10g sfp+ Fiber NIC cards 100% compatible with Mikrotik x86
i could not find it anywhere.. or 25G or 40G nics available compatible, we have tested a dual SFP+ HP fiber card we had hanging around.. and neither RoS v6 neither RoS v7 could detect the card
we are running RouterOS in SAS 15K 146gb intel hdd..
Because its Intell PowerEdge Gen 11 server.. not sure if its worth even using or trying to find a newer Gen 12 rX20 or rx30 to run it..