This page documents the installation and configuration of MikroTik CHR on VMware ESXi, covering supported network interfaces (vmxnet3, E1000) and disk controllers (IDE, VMware Paravirtual SCSI), along with instructions for enabling jumbo frames by adjusting MTU settings and reconfiguring interfaces.

CHR: VMWare ESXi Installation

Supported Network and Disk Interfaces

VMware ESXi

Network adapters:

• vmxnet3
• E1000

Disk controller:

• IDE
• VMware Paravirtual SCSI
• LSI Logic SAS
• LSI Logic Parallel

ESXi

Enable Promiscuous mode in the port group or virtual switch that you will use for the VM.

ESXi documentation:

• https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004099

Running on VMware ESXi

Changing MTU

VMware ESXi supports MTU values up to 9000 bytes. To take advantage of jumbo frames, adjust your ESXi installation to allow a higher MTU.

Important: A virtual Ethernet interface added after the MTU change will properly support jumbo frames. However, interfaces added before the MTU change will be limited to the original MTU value. If you have interfaces configured before changing the MTU, you must remove and re-add them to the virtual guest.

Example: Two interfaces added to the ESXi guest show different MTU values based on when they were added:

[admin@chr-vm] > interface ethernet print 
Flags: X - disabled, R - running, S - slave 
 #    NAME           MTU MAC-ADDRESS       ARP       
 0 R  ether1        9000 00:0C:29:35:37:5C enabled   
 1 R  ether2        1500 00:0C:29:35:37:66 enabled