Manual:CHR
Cloud Hosted Router
Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) is a RouterOS version meant for running as a virtual machine. It supports x86 64-bit architecture and can be used on most of popular hypervisors such as VMWare, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, KVM and others. CHR has full RouterOS features enabled by default but has a different licensing model than other RouterOS versions.
System Requirements
Minimal requirements:
- 64bit CPU with virtualisation support
- More than 32MB RAM for the CHR instance
- 64MB disk space for the CHR virtual hard drive
CHR has been tested on following platforms:
- VirtualBox 5 on Linux and OS X
- VMWare Fusion 7 and 8 on OS X
- Qemu 2.4.0.1 on OS X
- Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012 (Only Generation 1 Hyper-V virtual machine is supported at the moment)
How to Install CHR
We provide 4 different virtual disk images to choose from:
- RAW disk image (.img file)
- VMWare disk image (.vmdk file)
- Hyper-V disk image (.vhdx file)
- VirtualBox disk image (.vdi file)
NOTE: These are disk images, not importable virtual machine appliances
Steps to install CHR
- Step1: Download virtual disk image for your hypervisor
- Step2: Create a guest virtual machine
- Step3: Use previously downloaded image file as a virtual disk drive
- Step4: Start the guest CHR virtual machine
- Step5: Wait while RouterOS is installing itself and reboots
- Step6: Log in to your new CHR. Default user is 'admin', without password
See instructions how to install CHR
- VMWare Fusion / Workstation
- VirtualBox
- Hyper-V
CHR Licencing
The CHR has 4 license levels:
- free
- p1 perpetual-1 ($45)
- p10 perpetual-10 ($95)
- p-unlimited perpetual-unlimited ($250)
60-day free trial license is available for all paid license levels. To get the free trial license, you have to have an account on the mikrotik.com as all the license management will happen there.
CHR running instance will indicate a time when it has to access account server to renew the license. If CHR instance will not be able to renew the license it will behave as if trial period as ran out on that router and will.
Paid licenses
These licenses will become available later on for a fee.
p1
p1 (perpetual-1) license level allows to run CHR indefinitely. It is limited to 1Gbps upload per interface. All the rest of the features provided by CHR are available without restrictions. It is possible to upgrade p1 to p10 or p-unlimited After the upgrade purchased the former license will become available for later use on your account.
p10
p10 (perpetual-10) license level allows to run CHR indefinitely. It is limited to 10Gbps upload per interface. All the rest of the features provided by CHR are available without restrictions. It is possible to upgrade p10 to p-unlimited After the upgrade purchased the former license will become available for later use on your account.
p-unlimited
The p-unlimited (perpetual-unlimited) license level allows to run CHR indefinitely. It is highest tier license and it has no limitations enforced.
Free licenses
There are several options to use and try CHR free of charge.
free
The free license level allows to run CHR indefinitely. It is limited to 1Mbps upload per interface. All the rest of the features provided by CHR are available without restrictions. To use this, all you have to do is download disk image file from our download page and create a virtual guest.
60-day trial
To take advantage of increased data transfer speeds, you will have to have an account registered on mikrotik.com. Then you can request desired license level for trial from your router that will assign your router ID to your account and enable a purchase of the license from your account. All the paid license equivalents are available for trial. A trial period is 60 days from the day of acquisition.
Getting the License
After the initial setup a CHR instance will have free license assigned. From there it is possible to upgrade license to a higher tier. Once you have a trial license all the work with the license is done on the account server where it is possible to upgrade license to higher tier unless it is p-unlimited already.
Upgrade from free to p1 or higher
Initial upgrade from the free tier to anything higher than that incurs CHR instance registration on the account server. To do that you have to enter your MikroTik.com username and password and a desired license level you want to acquire. As a result, a CHR ID number will be assigned to your account on the account server and trial of 60 days license created for that ID.
In WinBox (Sytem -> License menu):
In command line:
[admin@MikroTik] > /system license print
system-id: 6lR1ZP/utuJ
level: free
[admin@MikroTik] > /system license renew
account: mymikrotikcomaccount
password: *********************
level: p1
status: done
[admin@MikroTik] > /system license print
system-id: 6lR1ZP/utuJ
level: p1
next-renewal-at: jan/10/2016 21:59:59
deadline-at: feb/09/2016 21:59:59
Upgrade from higher tier up
An upgrade only to a higher tier is possible at the moment (for paid licenses only) and that is done in the account server. For changes to take place on the router itself renew command should be issued. When the router already has any kind of trial or paid license, the license level you set for the renew command is not important anymore, it is mandated by the account server. Possible upgrades are as follows:
- p1 upgrade to p10
- p1 upgrade to p-unlimited
- p10 upgrade to p-unlimited
To acquire higher lever trial, set up new CHR instance, renew the license and select the desired level
License Update
In '/system license' menu router will indicate time next-renewal-at when it will attempt to contact server located on licence.mikrotik.com. Communication attempts will be performed once in an hour after the date on next-renewal-at and will not cease until the server responds with an error. If deadline-at date is reached without successfully contacting the account server, the router will consider that license has expired and will disallow further software updates. However, router will continue to work with the same license tier as before.