Solved: Creating A VLAN or Virtual Router in ESXi

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BzowK🇺🇸

Creating A VLAN or Virtual Router in ESXi

Hello Everyone -

Where I work I want to create a virtual domain for testing purposes. It will consist of a few servers & DC all hosted on an ESXi host. So that this domain and it's machines are not visible to the rest of the network. I planned to put them on their own VLAN - but - still have a route or uplink to the production network for internet.

I could of course just place a physical router in between the ESXi box and the rest of the network, but that would be too easy. :)

I found in the vSphere Clinet (ESXi) where I can add a Virtual Switch. (Screenshot below) I don't know enough about it, though, to create what I'm wanting to do in my above description.

Suggestions would be appreciated and any detail or steps would be helpful too.

Thanks!

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mpopal🇺🇸

With VMware Lab Manager you would be able to this very easily with its fenced network option. You can do this without Lab Manager, but with much more effort. Unfortunately, I don't have all of the details on how to do this without Lab Manager. I'm sure someone here will provide the details and I will be one of the first viewers to read how to do it.

bgoering🇺🇸

There are a number of virtual routers you could put in your envirnment. I prefer Monowall (http://m0n0.ch) myself for light duty routing. It is easy to set up and use and will provide the funtionality you are looking for.

Other alternatives i am aware of are Vyatta, which is a good high performance router for virtual environments, but seems a bit complex to set up and use; and PFsense which I have heard good things about but never personally tried.

Good Luck

bgoering🇺🇸

I should mention that Monowall is technically a firewall - but works just fine for routing...

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Danny McDaniel🇺🇸

What you could do is leave your current vswitch which has no uplinks the way it is and your test/dev vm's to it, but add on more vm that is running something like ISA server that has two uplinks. So, in Edit Settings you would have network adapter #1 going to the "private" vswitch and network adapter #2 going to your VM Network portgroup. Then configure your bridging/gateway vm to pass only certain traffic through.

bgoering🇺🇸

That is pretty much what I was suggesting with monowall...

Danny McDaniel🇺🇸

right, but I hadn't seen your post prior to mine... work distractions and all that stuff. :)

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Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)🇬🇧

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VMware, a software company founded in 1998, was one of the first commercially successful companies to offer x86 virtualization. The storage company EMC purchased VMware in 1994. Dell Technologies acquired EMC in 2016. VMware’s parent company is now Dell Technologies. VMware has many software products that run on desktops, Microsoft Windows, Linux, and macOS, which allows the virtualizing of the x86 architecture. Its enterprise software hypervisor for servers, VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is a bare-metal hypervisor that runs directly on the server hardware and does not require an additional underlying operating system.