Subnet Planning for a Nested VCF Lab
Review nested VCF subnet planning for ESXi management, vMotion, vSAN, provisioning and management VMs, with separate address pools for lab deployments.
Overview
This nested VCF subnet plan covers the networks I use for ESXi management, vMotion, vSAN, provisioning and management virtual machines. The design supports separate VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere Foundation test environments behind a virtual router.
Virtual router design
All of these subnets will be configured on a virtual router, I have been using VyOS virtual routers for a few years now and that seems to be the first choice for all home labs from my research. VMware also has developed a virtual router using Photon OS that is included with the holodeck product but I have not looked at building a custom configuration for Photon OS yet to meet my needs but that is something that I plan to look at in the future as I already have built other Photon VMs for various roles within previous labs.
Nested subnet allocation
With that said, this subnet will be smaller than my infrastructure because it’s sole focus will be on supporting multiple VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSphere Foundation environments that I plan to keep as needed. The subnets I will be carving out of this class B are:
| /27 vSphere/ESXi Management | This will be used for all the nested ESXi hosts I will be deploying |
| /27 vMotion | This will be used for vMotion capabilities and I will be building static pools for different VCF/VVF deployments to ensure no overlap |
| /27 vSAN | This will be used for vSAN networking and will have static pools for the different VCF/VVF deployments to ensure no overlap |
| /27 Provisioning | This is used for cold storage migrations and snapshots to segment traffic from the other vmkernels |
| /25 Virtual Machine Management | This is going to be used for the VMware management VMs. (vCenter,NSX,Fleet,Ops, etc..) |
The last subnet I will be using is for all the networking pieces in my lab to include my physical components and the segments required for NSX networking.