Comment on Virtualizing my router - any experience to share? Pos/cons?
jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
I would advise against it. Separation of concerns isn’t important until it is. If your host server is unavailable for any reason, now EVERYTHING is unavailable. Having your server go down is bad. Being unable to browse the internet when your host is down and you’re trying to figure out why is worse.
There are also risks involved in running your firewall on the same host as all your other VM’s without adding a lot of complex network configurations.
GameGod@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I appreciate the advice. I have like 3 spare routers I can swap in if the server fails, plus I have internet on my phone lol. It’s a home environment, not mission critical.
My logic is partly that I think a VM on an x86 server could potentially be more reliable than some random SBC like a Banana Pi because it’ll be running a mainline kernel with common peripherals, plus I can have RAID and ECC, etc (better hardware). I just don’t fully buy the “separation of concerns” argument because you can always use that against VMs, and the argument for VMs is cost effectiveness via better utilization of hardware. At home, it can also mean spending money on better hardware instead of redundant hardware (why do I need another Linux box?).
I don’t follow. It’s isolated via a dedicated bridge adapter on the host, which is not shared with other VMs. Further, WAN traffic is also isolated by a VLAN, which only the router VM is configured for.