RouterOS X86 or CHR for PPPOE BRAS?

RouterOS General
1

Hello.

I have a Dell PowerEdge R610 server with an intel 82599ES 10Gb card which I would like to repurpose for a pppoe mikrotik bras.

Clients to terminate: 1500. Simple Queues with SFQ.
100 NAT rules
4 Mangle rules
22 firewall rules
Peek bandwidth a little bit over 1Gb/s

There are two options:

  1. Bare metal Mikrotik X86 installation
    disadvantages:
  • SAS drives are not detected because of unsupported perc6/i raid card.
  • 32bit, 2GB ram only is usable
  • Installation only possible on an USB stick which which may be less reliable
    advantages:
  • possibly better system resource use and speed

    \
  1. CHR installation (on ESXI)
    advantages:
  • SAS drives are detected which provides a more robust installation with raid support
  • 64bit, More than 2GB ram is usable
    disadvantages:
  • possibly worse system resource use and speed


    I would like to ask for advice which way should I go? I trust more bare metal installations, but there are some severe limitations with the Mikrotik X86 version. On the other hand I read various topics where people complained that CHR is not up to the task.
    Is anyone running a pppoe concentrator on CHR? What are your thoughts? Is it capable? Should I stick to the X86 version?

Thanks.

2

For 64bit support read:
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/x86-64-ros-64bit-mikrotik/104992/38

3

I would go for CHR based but as you say there are a few things to think about. If you need high speed throughput VMware is your best bet due to drivers. And if your hypervisor infrastructure or skills lack this will be the major issue. There are many who treat CHR as X86 ad from what I can read this does not always go well :slight_smile:
One of the reason I would go CHR is management and how to build hardware redundency. With a hypervisor the life cycle management will be a heck off a lot easier. In theory you never have to reinstall only upgrade. When the server is old you move to a new one with without much effort. Also you will have the ability to run more then one CHR if the CHR can’t use all the power of the server. Devide the load on two CHR instead of one.
I just see much more future in CHR then x86 installation. If you don’t trust CHR I would go with a routerboard product. That my opinion any way. Don’t know if this helps you or not :slight_smile:

4

Dell is providing customized ESXi (free) for your server. That’s really good piece of software for your future project.
Be aware that you should install ESXi on SDCard (your server should have one).
Go to dell.com and look for drivers. You will be asked for service tag. Before ESXi installation I recomend to update BIOS to latest version.