Run the Edge Router VM on Your Own Equipment
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Introduction

This install guide will walk you through the steps required to launch a NetFoundry Edge Router VM on your private cloud VM stack e.g. VMware, Virtualbox; and assumes you have already created the Edge Router in your NetFoundry network and captured the registration one-time key. We will refer to this VM in some places as the virtual customer premises equipment (vCPE).

Alternatively, you may be seeking

MD5 and SHA256 checksum:

If you wish to verify that there is no malicious actor modifying the image and it's contents, you can use the MD5 or SHA256 checksums to confirm the authenticity.

To verify the checksum of the image downloaded:

Make sure the checksum file and the image file are under the same directory.

Linux:

sha256sum -c <sha256 checksum file> 
md5sum -c <md5 checksum file>

For example:

sha256sum -c nf-edge-router-vmware.sha256 
md5sum -c nf-edge-router-vmware.md5

How it Works

Data sessions inside your NetFoundry Network are established outbound from your on-premises Edge Router VM to your dedicated, hosted Edge Routers in NetFoundry data centers. The return path of the data session is utilized to receive data from the Endpoints in your NetFoundry network. As a result, inbound firewall configuration is generally not required for full functionality. This method is similar to STUN/TURN.

See Edge Gateway Sizing Guide for information on sizing your gateway VM for required throughput.

When to Contact Customer Support

The VM is configured to work with a single virtual network adapter. Please consult with customer support if your requirements include a VM with multiple interfaces (multi-homed), IP forwarding/routing for an attached subnet, or high availability.

Get the VM

Select your desired VM stack from the NetFoundry Downloads page:

VMware: VMDK disk, VMware specific ovf file. open-vm-tools is installed.
Virtualbox: VMDK disk, VirtualBox specific ovf file.
KVM: QCOW2 disk with README file
Hyper-V: Gen1 VHD disk with README file

Register the VM

If your VM stack provides a way to run a script on first boot you may use something like this, substituting your own registration key:

#!/bin/bash
/opt/netfoundry/router-registration {key}

In the NetFoundry console, confirm the Edge Router is REGISTERED within ten minutes. If you are unable to inject a first boot script then you may log in after first boot and manually run the same commands.

Advanced Registration Parameters

In the above example we used the most simple form of the router-registration command. Know more about the registration command and the parameters available for special cases such as configuring transit link listeners in How to Register the Edge Router VM.

Defaults

The default username and password is "ziggy". The VM will force a password change the first time you login.

We highly recommend replacing the password authentication with ssh keys. In order to accomplish this, you would need add an ssh public key to the local /home/$USER/.ssh/authorized_keys file, creating the file if it doesn't already exist. Once you verify ssh access is working, you can disable password authentication by editing the file /etc/ssh/sshd_config & changing the option "PasswordAuthentication" to "no", then restarting the VM.

How to Configure Static IP Address

On The edge router image, we have provided a helper script to set static IP.

sudo set-ip.sh

Choose the network interface you want to modify from the list, and enter at least the IP, PREFIX and Gateway field to complete the setup.

At the end of setup, you should have some setting like this:

Hit "0" to finish the setup.

How to Extend Disk & Filesystem for NetFoundry Edge Router VM

We have covered how to expand a NetFoundry Edge Router VM Ubuntu system disk that uses LVM, after the underlying virtual disk has been increased from 40 GB to 100 GB.

1. Disk Layout Overview (Before Expansion)

Filesystems

Mount Point     Logical Volume              Size
/               ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv0        15G
/var            ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv1        4G
/var/log        ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv2        10G
/var/tmp        ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv3        1G
/home           ubuntu-vg0/ubuntu-vg0        3.9G
/boot           /dev/sda2                   1G

Disk & Partitions

/dev/sda   40G
├─sda1     1M
├─sda2     1G    /boot
├─sda3     4G    → ubuntu-vg0 (/home)
└─sda4    34G    → ubuntu-vg (/, /var, /var/log, /var/tmp)

After the hypervisor expands the disk to 100 GB, the OS will see the larger disk but existing partitions and LVM volumes will remain unchanged until manually resized.

2. Verify the Disk Has Been Expanded

Confirm the system detects the new disk size - Expected result:

lsblk

sda   100G

If the size has not updated, reboot the system or rescan the disk (see below).

Rescan the Disk (Without Rebooting)

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/block/sda/device/rescan

Verify the new disk size

lsblk

3. Expand the LVM Partition (/dev/sda4)

The main LVM volume group (ubuntu-vg) resides on /dev/sda4. Expand this partition to fill the available space.

# Expand the partition, but do NOT consume 100% of the disk
sudo growpart /dev/sda 4

Verify the new size and it should now reflect the increased capacity.

lsblk
/dev/sda4

4. Resize the LVM Physical Volume

sudo pvresize /dev/sda4

5. Extend Logical Volumes Using

lvextend -r

This procedure grows /dev/sda4 to consume the remaining disk space and allocates it as follows:

/ → +10 GB
/var → +10 GB
/var/log → +30 GB
/var/tmp → +10 GB

Extend Root Filesystem (/)

sudo lvextend -L +10G -r /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv0

Extend /var

sudo lvextend -L +10G -r /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv1

Extend /var/log

sudo lvextend -L +30G -r /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv2

Extend /var/tmp

sudo lvextend -L +10G -r /dev/ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv3

7. Final Verification

Confirm all filesystems reflect the new sizes:

df -h
lsblk
sudo vgs

8. Notes & Best Practices

Always expand disks at the hypervisor or cloud layer first
lvextend -r simplifies resizing by handling the filesystem automatically
Leave unallocated space in volume groups when possible
/var and /var/log tend to grow over time
Take snapshots or backups before resizing production systems

The system is now fully utilizing the expanded disk capacity.

Firewall Requirements

Here's a direct link to the main article about firewall requirements.

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