Running on VMware ESXi

ESXi 5.5 or later

.ova files are available for supporting users. You can also set up VyOS using a generic Linux instance by attaching the bootable ISO file and installing using the install image command.

Note

Previous issues have been documented with GRE/IPSEC tunneling using the E1000 adapter on VyOS guests. Use the VMXNET3 adapter instead.

Memory Contention Considerations

When the underlying ESXi host reaches approximately 92% memory utilization, it begins the balloon process to reclaim memory from guest operating systems. This creates artificial memory pressure through the vmmemctl driver. Because VyOS does not have a swap file by default, this pressure cannot move memory data to a paging file. Instead, it consumes memory and forces the guest into a low memory state with no recovery option. The balloon can expand to 65% of guest allocated memory, so a VyOS guest using more than 35% of memory can encounter an out-of-memory situation and trigger the kernel oom_kill process. The oom_kill process then terminates memory-hungry processes.

To prevent ballooning, configure VyOS routers in a resource group with adequate memory reservations.

References

https://muralidba.blogspot.com/2018/03/how-does-linux-out-of-memory-oom-killer.html