Hello!
I was tasked to create a server room and I don’t have to much experience with mikrotik products. Our server room will have 5 servers for webhosting and LAN will have 4PCs attached.
We have 2 BGP with full tables (about 450k)from 2 different ISPs with Gigabit connections.
We are on a low budget and instead buying some second hand brand names I think is best to buy some mikrotik new hardware for this setup.
My questions:
1)What is the router minimum hardware requirements for this BGP sessions
2)Is it ok if I have only 1 router for this kind of setup?
3)Is my setup with 1 router and 2 Level2 switches hold this kind of setup?
If you feel that your past experiences will help me building this server room please let me know and write some words below. They will be greatly apreciated.
Thank you!
Please post more details. How much bandwidth do you want to push from your servers (basically how many ethernet links) and how many ethernet and SFP links do you want in total?
How much L3 and L7 routing and firewall do you intend to do?
how much BGP bandwidth do you need?
Are you going to segment your LAN or have everything on the same subnet?
It may help to give a network diagram on what you want to achieve.
since i dont check the forums regularly i’ll try to guess what you need. You need at least an RB1100AHx2. Im going to assume your servers and machines are all on the same subnet and they either need NAT or use public IPs and routes. Either way to handle BGP you need sufficient RAM and a multicore routerboard because updating BGP tables can cause a temporary hang. You can also use a CCR too.
Im going to assume your servers use multiple ethernet NICs. You can either purchase a CRS or managed switch of another brand. Connect multiple cables from CRS to your chosen routerboard and perform bonding with at least 2 ethernet ports. If you can afford SFP+ get it to future proof your set up. Unless you need more than 24 ethernet ports a CRS will be sufficient for your switching needs. Do not use unmanaged switches in a datacenter environment. Count how many ethernet ports you need for your setup between router and all your machines. If you are going to need more than get a 48 port managed switch.
Make sure to get a routerboard which you can upgrade ram and has enough CPU power for the bandwidth you want. Look at their spec charts of how many packets they can route under a number of firewall rules or bridging depending on your setup. You only need 1 router or 1 router + 1 switch mainly dependent on how many ports you intend to use. Dual 1Gb/s ISP = 2Gb/s of routing, 4Gb/s of routing if the ISPs have bidirectional links. Dont forget to add overhead on CPU for firewall. There isnt a MIPs based routerboard that can handle your requirements even if you are really on a budget. If you cant afford even the minimum i just said which is just 1 RB1100AHx2 on its own assuming it has sufficient ports than consider second hand. There is no shame in second hand as long as it is a good brand.
Hello! Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a detailed post.
You are spot on on pretty much everything. For exemple, the setup diagram it will look like this:
Now, more info on the setup. We will have to move on Jan 5th of next year. All discussion with ISPs were on availability and plans not to much technical data. 1 of the ISPs has simetric bandwidth and both of them have gigabit connection.
how many ethernet links?
1x 4Pc’s and 2x 5 server = 14 ethernet links - endpoints
How much L3 and L7 routing and firewall do you intend to do?
I honestly don’t know.
How much BGP bandwidth do you need?
The new server room has to cover new applications that we developed, and we prefer to host in house, to monitor and further develop on the spot. There is already a client base for web hosting, but from our previous experience is not to much trafic in the end. The intent with the gigabit connections is to be fast, really fast on delivering content.
Only 1 question please! Why is not recomended to use unmanaged L2 switch on datacenter ?
We were prospecting for CCR1009-8G-1S-1S+ 2gb of ram on this one!
Thanks a bunch!
L2 unmanaged dont have SNMP, security or even port bonding capability which means you’re capping your maximum bandwidth per system to 1 Gb/s. Also many unmanaged switches cannot output non blocking traffic on the total bandwidth of all ports. For example a 5 port gigabit unmanaged switch may be rated as 4.8Gb/s max. You can always use a CRS since they have sufficient port and 1 of them has SFP+ which would make it easy to pair it with another mikrotik for configuration reasons but isnt necessary. Managed switches can be monitored and configured which helps to see where something goes wrong.
CCR1009 should be strong enough. If ram is not enough you can upgrade to fit all the BGP tables. It can take a few minutes for BGP tables to build each time and make sure you update the routerOS version on it.
Thank a lot for all the helpful info!
I will keep you updated on how the things are evolving. Maybe I will need some help on the way.
Posting soon 