Just wanted to give a quick report - I got hold of a MS Virtual Server (MSVS) from PowerVPS.com that is in beta testing, and we’re running the free VMWare Server (inside the MSVS), and inside the VMWare server, running the Mikrotik ROS 2.9 - works great! We’re using the MSVS as a PPtP VPN concentrator (the deployed MT’s ‘dial’ into the MSVS as PPtP clients), and then the MT inside the VMWare is also ‘dialed’ into the VPN. This then allows us to use the VMWare MT as the NTP server for all the deployed MTs, and soon we’re going to use it for some central AAA functions (once we figure that out).
Additionally, I’m running “The Dude” on the MSVS, and it works great, currently have it monitoring 4+ different networks (our wireless networks are scattered around). For those of us who aren’t ISPs, renting a MSVS allows centralized network managment from an Internet-backbone-attached machine, without the cost and additional maintenance of renting a dedicated server. In my opinion (so far, at least), the MSVS option is also better from a reliability standpoint - it is part of a cluster, backed up, etc, vice having a stand-alone machine that you must maintain on your own. More details in this post at PowerVPS (aka Defender Hosting):
http://forums.deftechgroup.com/showthread.php?t=2052
As a side note, you might wonder why we used the MSVS as the PPtP server instead of the VMWare MT? No reason, really - it’s just that we setup the MSVS as the PPtP server before we thought about running the MT in VMWare!
Cheers,
David