Install MikroTik RouterOS (CHR) on a virtual server
Cloud Hosted Router is a version of Mikrotik RouterOS designed to be deployed on virtual machines as a standalone operating system.
Last updated
Cloud Hosted Router is a version of Mikrotik RouterOS designed to be deployed on virtual machines as a standalone operating system.
Last updated
Installation of Mikrotik CHR on our cloud infrastructure is possible for any virtual server tariff, including the minimum one with characteristics of 1 CPU / 2 RAM / 30 GB NVMe
This article will cover an example of manual CHR RouterOS installation using a virtual server based on the SWEs-1 tariff
To start installing MikroTik CHR, you will need to order a virtual server in our personal cabinet:
A SWEs-1 tariff server will be deployed as a test server in the location Sweden (Stockholm).
When ordering the service, it is also necessary to select the CentOS 7 operating system, in which the work on the further deployment of the CHR image will take place.
After ordering, the server will be activated within 120 seconds, then you can proceed to install MikroTik CHR according to the following instructions:
Connect to the server via SSH protocol using the connection data received by e-mail during activation or specified on the service page.
Download the required version of MikroTik CHR to the server from the official website at the link https://mikrotik.com/download (in the example we will consider the latest currently stable version 7.8):
Caution: It is required to unload the CHR edition labeled as "Raw disk image"
To do this, copy the link to the disk image from the site and get a direct link like https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/7.8/chr-7.8.img.zip
Next, upload the image to the server using the command (replace in the command with the copied link):
After downloading the archived image to the server, unpack it with the command:
Then we will write the unpacked image to the virtual disk of the server using the "dd" utility:
The image has been successfully written to disk, all that remains is to reboot the server to initialize the MikroTik CHR with commands:
After executing the above commands, the MikroTik CHR OS will start running on your server.
The system is almost ready to use out of the box, but still requires some customization, such as setting the administrator password and initial network configuration. These settings are discussed below:
To access the system before the network was configured, let's use the VMmanager control panel and VNC console:
In the VNC console, we will be greeted with a login prompt:
After successful login, the system will offer to read the software license. You should accept the offer by pressing the "Y" key or refuse by pressing the "N" key.
Next, the system will ask you to change the default admin password:
After the superuser password has been changed, we can start configuring the network. All required network parameters (IP address, gateway and mask) are specified in the personal account on the service page (in the "IP Addresses" subsection), as well as in the VMmanager PU (in the "IP Addresses" section):
We configure the network as follows:
Let's check the correctness of the configuration using the ping utility:
Here we can see that access to the external network is present and the requested resource responds to echo-requests.
Done. The MikroTik CHR image is deployed on the virtual server and is fully ready for use.
