VMWare ESX and Router OS

RouterOS Beginner Basics
1

What man can do to start Mikrotik router OS on VMWARE ESX virtual machine? As I can see Mikrotik doesn’t support scsi hdd. So how can I load MOS on such virtual machine?

2

I’ve not used ESX, but have MT 2.9 and 3.1 successfully running under VMWare workstation running about 8 instances simultaneously.

  1. Create the VMWare machine using the wizard
  2. When finished, select “Edit virtual machine settings”
  3. Remove the hard drive that it created
  4. Add a new hard disk. Part of the wizard prompts for SCSI or IDE.
  5. Select IDE and the rest is history.

You may also want to set the VM to boot from the ISO image stored on your hard drive. It will then boot the CD, image the VM with MT, and on next boot - you’re up and running with the 24hr license on a blank machine.

Rich

3

if you use 64bit guest it will present an intel NIC instead of the older one.

4

and you can also edit the virtual machine file ( .vmx) with any text base editor and add

Ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

it also will give you Inter E1000 NIC if you created your VM already.

and change

scsi0.present = "TRUE"

to

scsi0.present = "FALSE"

to disable SCSI controller

5

Hi All,

Is there any workaround on how to get the RouterOS running in an ESX enviroment? - ESX don’t like IDE hardrives :frowning:

Thanks
Felix

6

what you mean by - don’t like IDE devices?
what errors you see?

IMO everything is working without any problems.

7

ESX can not handle IDE drives for the guestOS, it is only supported for CDROM drives.

And RouterOS don’t accept SCSI drives, so I can’t install the os :frowning:

Do you have a working RouterOS in vmware ESX?

Thanks
Felix

8

I have the same problem. I see no way to install RouterOS 3.3 on a ESX3 server.
The installation stops with: Searching for harddrives…
And it does not detect my SCSI HDD, as it is not supported in RouterOS 3.3 (and will not be supported in the future).
And i see no way to use anything but SCSI on ESX3 Server.
If you figure this one out, please post your solution here.

Thanks…

9

Someone got it working with XenSource, but I have a similar problem on my XenServer 4.0 - So I don’t think there is a workaround :frowning:

Thanks
Felix

10

the only solution is to keep hounding VMWare to re add IDE support on their flag ship …

they have pretty much shot them self’s in the foot as 80% of the programs we needed are IDE only

VMWare seem to have forgotten all about compatibility

Honestly how does emulating an IDE Drive affect performance and functionality :S

apart from that the only other way is to run other Virtual machine that does allow IDE Support and then install inside of that

or for MikroTik to allow us to add our own drivers …

11

ESX does support IDE hard disks. It’s just not intuitive on how to add them.

I’m using ESXi 4. If you specify a ‘custom’ configuration, after you specify the disk size, you can specify the interface. It defaults to SCSI but you can set it to IDE.

The issue I am running into is performance. It destroys a Xeon processor if you try to push a lot of traffic. I am told this is because is cannot load the correct drivers for the network interfaces. Possibly I should specify the ‘E1000’ adapter as suggested in this thread.

12

You can also just edit the VMX File.

Take all the SCSI0:0.* out

add
ide0:0.present = “TRUE”
ide0:0.filename = “routeros.vmdk”

Then edit the VM, and save it in vSphere, then start the VM (works in ESXi 5.1)

13

i’m using vSphere v6

  1. Create New Virtual Machine - Custom - Next
  2. Name up to u - Next
  3. Select your datastore - Next
  4. In here im using Virtual Machine version 8 - Next
  5. OS Other : Unix - Other (32 bit) - Next
  6. Next
  7. Memory 512Mb - Next
  8. NIC 1 - Next
  9. Next
  10. Create a new virtual disk - Next
  11. 512 Mb - Next
  12. Virtual Device Node select IDE (0:0) - Next
  13. Tick Edit the virtual machine settings before completion - Finish

Good luck :wink:

14

Anciently old, and anciently old.

Try newer versions of your software…