Hello Folks,

We plan to migrate The Dude server from older version to current v6 and looking for a help in choosing the right platform for a new server.
Our options are: CCR1036-12G-4S OR CHR on regular VMware ESXi hypervisor.
Number of monitored MikroTik boxes: ~150 + the same number of simple monitoring of peripheral devices.

Here is my vision on that:

CHR:
+ No additional hardware (if you already have virtualization environment deployed).
+ Easy to add resources, increase disk space. (NOT SURE about adding vCPUs)
+ Easy to backup/restore as a regular VM (if backup system is already implemented in your virtualization environment).
- License is required. But the price for P1 (1Gbps would be enough I believe), even 10G is cheap.
- Shared resource pool that can potentially cause unpredictable performance issue.

CCR:
+ Predicted performance, dedicated resources. (NOT SURE, will all the cores of CCR be used by The Dude server processes?)
- This particular model CCR1036-12G-4S doesn't have SD card connector or internal USB connector. That means external FLASH/HDD will be outside of the box.
- Single point of failure that will not be possible to replace quickly OR you have to keep another CCR in stock.
- Need external server/storage to perform periodic backup of The Dude server.


Another option that we are looking for is the way to implement redundancy. Is there any way to cluster a couple of CCRs or CHRs in active/standby mode?

Please advise and share your thoughts.

alex1,

We currently use Dude v6 on CHR, all working fine for 150+ devices.

We installed a license P1, but it seems that currently we not achieve free limit - 1Mbit/s upload limit.

Hardware are following:
1. CPU: 1
2. Memory: 1GB
3. HDD1: ROS - 1 GB.
4. HDD2: Dude - 20 GB.

I don't know anything about clustering or fault tolerance. But as you said it is more easy to do this manually using CHR - just install another instance and attach drive with Dude database.

Thank you!

The answer is simple. If you need a ccr and do not have vmware yet, run it on ccr. In opposite case use chr. You can let it run on two or more devices and synchonize the changes by importing the regular dude backup from the main instance to the others.

Folks, thank you for feedback.

eriitguy, 3 days after I installed CHR with The Dude on ESXi node a VM just stopped and I'm trying to figure out what caused the issue.
More details here - CHR on ESXi - VM got stopped

Could you please provide some details about your setup and your evaluation about how stable this solution is?

Thank you in advance.

I have never seen stability problems with vmware workstation. Not tested it in esxi. Follow the suggestion to use newer esxi...