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Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) is MikroTik’s RouterOS, built to run as a virtual machine. Same interface and capabilities as MikroTik’s “hardware” routers: routing, VPN server, firewall, tunnels. Handy when you need a managed network node in a specific location, not just Linux.
Commands are current as of writing. Before installing, check the official documentation help.mikrotik.com (the Cloud Hosted Router, CHR section) — versions and image links change.
The installation below writes the CHR image straight onto the system disk and completely replaces your current OS along with all its data. Do this only on a clean or brand-new server. After writing, there’s no more familiar SSH to Linux — you’ll log into the router through the web console (VNC) from the bot. Move everything important off first.

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Installation

CHR is installed not as a package, but by “flashing” the disk: you download a raw image and write it over the disk with dd. By default the server runs Ubuntu 22.04 and you connect as root.
1

Confirm the disk name

Check what the system disk is called:
lsblk
On a VPS this is usually /dev/vda. Write it down — there’s no room for error here: dd writes exactly where you point it.
2

Download the CHR image

Open mikrotik.com/download, find the Cloud Hosted Router (CHR) section, and copy the “Raw disk image” link for the version you need. The URL contains the version and looks roughly like this: https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/7.15.3/chr-7.15.3.img.zip. Substitute the real link:
wget -O chr.img.zip "PASTE_REAL_URL_FROM_MIKROTIK.COM"
Don’t use the example above as is — the link contains a version, and an outdated URL will return a 404. Without the right image, dd would write garbage to the disk and the server wouldn’t boot.
3

Unpack it

Unpack the archive — inside is the .img image:
unzip chr.img.zip
mv chr-*.img chr.img
If you happened to download a .gz instead of a .zip, unpack it with gunzip chr.img.gz.
4

Write the image to the disk

Double-check the device name from step 1 — this command overwrites the disk irreversibly.
dd if=chr.img of=/dev/vda bs=4M
sync
5

Reboot the server

The best way is the “Reboot” button in the @lumivps_bot bot. If the console still responds, you can do this:
echo b > /proc/sysrq-trigger
After the reboot, the server starts up as a MikroTik router.
6

Log in and change the password

Open the server’s web console (VNC) from the bot. The login is admin, the password is empty. Set your own right away:
/user set admin password=YOUR_PASSWORD

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If networking doesn’t come up

Sometimes CHR doesn’t pick up the network settings automatically. In that case, enter them manually in the router console (take the IP, mask, gateway, and DNS from the server details in the bot): 
/ip address add address=YOUR_IP/24 interface=ether1
/ip route add gateway=GATEWAY
/ip dns set servers=1.1.1.1,8.8.8.8
To check connectivity: /ping 1.1.1.1.

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License

CHR runs perpetually on the free tier. The limitation of the free license is a speed cap of 1 Mbps on outbound traffic per interface; that’s enough for VPN and testing, but not for heavy traffic. To lift the cap you need a paid license — see the terms and tiers on the MikroTik site.
Not sure about the disk name? lsblk shows all disks and partitions. The system one is usually the largest and is called /dev/vda (less often /dev/sda). Write the image to the disk itself (/dev/vda), not to a partition (/dev/vda1).
Lumi handles the server and network; software setup is on you. Network or port issues — write to @lumisup_robot.

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Where to next

Firewall

Open the ports you need on the VPS before installing CHR.