I was thinking of consolidating our various systems at our primary PoP with just one more powerful server and using vmware ESXi to run our core router and mail/web server, and asterisk server.
My idea was also to have a redundant license of mikrotik running that I could use to switch over to or automatically fail over to if the first router failed (Im open to ideas on this).
Anyone not recommend this? is running routerOS not a good idea in ESXi in a production environment?
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
I think is a a good idea, the only problem HDD of server must be IDE so you cant use a high end server , I have tested but not in production, i was thinking same solution as you to have a failover access concentrator and core router, it will be very good if mikrotik support scsi in the future versions, so we can virtualize mikrotik in low cost but high realibility servers ex: dl360 you can find for 200 usd (used) it has two power supply and two scsi which can be configured raid mirror, etc..
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
I dont know if the virtualization of the interfaces vary between esxi and vmware server version.
On Server version, there is a lot of CPU usage on interface virtualization for ROS (Because you can't install vmware tools on ROS). Over 30mbit i had packet losses on a xeon quad core 2.8ghz.
About stability, i have another VMware server Environment working stable but his traffic is below 20mbit usually.
Up to your needs 
On Server version, there is a lot of CPU usage on interface virtualization for ROS (Because you can't install vmware tools on ROS). Over 30mbit i had packet losses on a xeon quad core 2.8ghz.
About stability, i have another VMware server Environment working stable but his traffic is below 20mbit usually.
Code: Select all
/system resource> pr
uptime: 23w2d22h42m40s
version: "3.13"
free-memory: 1794516kB
total-memory: 1824000kB
cpu: "Intel(R)"
cpu-count: 1
cpu-frequency: 2825MHz
cpu-load: 34%
free-hdd-space: 461292kB
total-hdd-space: 497357kB
write-sect-since-reboot: 112207
write-sect-total: 112207
architecture-name: "x86"
board-name: "x86"
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
On ESX mikrotik work very good, 4 RoS VM on server, more than 300 megabit traffic, 40% cpu usage (core-i7)
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
Nice to know, worth a try
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
yeah, because
sounds like some hard/soft problem... %)Over 30mbit i had packet losses on a xeon quad core 2.8ghz.
hm... I have a testing machine with RouterOS - ESXi host is having SATA drives only. you can use high-end platforms - you just need to create virtual IDE HDDs =)the only problem HDD of server must be IDE so you cant use a high end server
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
I think so too..yeah, becausesounds like some hard/soft problem... %)Over 30mbit i had packet losses on a xeon quad core 2.8ghz.
ESXi uses para-virtualization so should be better
Re: Production router with ESXi ?
do you get better NIC performance with e1000 drivers, by telling esxi that the guest is 64 bit?
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Inssomniak
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Re: Production router with ESXi ?
I did finally try this, and worked fine on the bench., but weird results in production.
350 users PPPoE
Using the e1000 network cards both physical and virtual.
Downloading large files just stops sometimes.
Speed test results are weird when customers run them, although no noticeable issues with their speed.
now since the vmware vmxnet3 driver is in the native 2.6 kernel maybe we can get that driver?
probably have to go back to physical machine.
350 users PPPoE
Using the e1000 network cards both physical and virtual.
Downloading large files just stops sometimes.
Speed test results are weird when customers run them, although no noticeable issues with their speed.
now since the vmware vmxnet3 driver is in the native 2.6 kernel maybe we can get that driver?
probably have to go back to physical machine.