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Virtualizing my router - any experience to share? Pros/cons? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by GameGod@lemmy.ca to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I'm thinking about moving my router to be a VM on a server in my homelab. Anyone have any experience to share about this? Any downsides I haven't thought of?

Backstory: My current pfSense router box can't keep up with my new fibre speeds because PPPOE is single threaded on FreeBSD, so as a test, I installed OpenWRT in a VM on a server I have and using VLANs, got it to act as a router for my network. I was able to validate it can keep up with the fibre speeds, so all good there. While shopping for a new routerboard, I was thinking about minimizing power and heat, and it made me realize that maybe I should just keep the router virtualized permanently. The physical server is already on a big UPS, so I could keep it running in a power outage.

I only have 1 gbps fibre and a single GbE port on the server, but I could buff the LAN ports if needed.

Any downsides to keeping your router as a VM over having dedicated hardware for it?

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[–] kalpol@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

Even if the virtualized router is down, I'll still have access to the physical server over the network until the DHCP lease expires. The switch does the work of delivering my packets on the LAN, not the router.

Yes, of course it depends on your network topology. If you have a link in the same subnet you're good (and can configure a static IP if need be). But if you're using vlans you can get in a pickle if the router is down. In my setup everything on the user side is segregated so if the router goes down I have to take a dedicated management laptop and plug into the host management network directly on the management switch where i keep a port empty. This maintains segregation and in practices means I take my ancient Acer Aspire One used for nothing else into the server room that looks strangely like a laundry room and plug it in.