Configuring 2 routers for home lab

General questions
1

I am new to vyos, just found it today. I downloaded the OVA and have configured one appliance just to test it out, but have some “best practice” questions. I have a VMware lab that crosses two physical hosts. I have VMware Workstation loaded on each physical server; each Workstation then hosts 1 SAN Appliance and 4 ESX hosts. All of the VMs are simply set to Bridged to the local LAN 10.0.0.x. This gives me the ESX density needed to try out different scenarios. (see link below)

https://coggle.it/diagram/W06GMKfTApYKyThd/t/vmware-lab-home-lan-10-0-0-0-24/9479424c194d74f1af45d2030c941133a806b1583b0675f8ccf2defa274c8aea

I am now looking to test a scenario for a customer that involves moving a large number of VMs from a 5.5 environment to a greenfield 6.5 environment. I am automating the conversion with the following high-level steps:
Power the VM down
Grab portgroup configuration
Unregister on old vCenter
Register on new vCenter
Connect to new portgroup
Perform a storage vMotion to convert disk from thick to thin

For this I am looking at vyos, with the thought of having two routers (one on each physical server). Networking is not my strong point, however, so am hoping someone can offer some assistance. I would like to be able to set up a couple (6 or 8) VLANs across the two routers and have them available to all ESXi hosts so I can move VMs between them.

I have been poking about the forum for a bit but have yet to find any threads where someone has done something similar. If there is anything written out there that someone could point me to, or if anyone has some suggestions to get started, it would be greatly appreciated.

2

You can make the VLANs accessible to all the esxi hosts when you connect them on a trunk. That way you don’t need any router in between.

3

I guess I am not understanding. The two physical hosts are connected to the “home” LAN (10.0.0.x) through an old netgear GS724T switch. The ESXi hosts that live on each, at the moment, are also on the home LAN. This is what I would like to change. I would like the 4 hosts in vCenter 1 on one segment, the four hosts in vCenter 2 on another, with VLANs for different VM traffic. At present I do not have a physical router aside from the cable modem going out to the internet, and that it not manageable. I was hoping to do all of this with a couple vyos appliances, one on each physical server.

4

As long as you are in the same subnet, you don’t need to route traffic, in your image your vlan is on both hosts reachable via the switch.

If I understand you correctly, you want to have one esxi host in it’s own subnet and the second in another one, bot will distribute their internal networks via a dynamic routing protocol. Is that assumption correct? Keep in mind that you can have multiple vlans carried on a single link (trunk), depending what your cabling plans are.