VMWare workstation Pro and VMware Fusion Pro both allow you to create custom networks. I use this feature a lot to replicate workloads as closely as possible and in some instance even by downloading the VM directly from VCentre, what one can’t then do is to route between them without some outside help.
Enter VYOS router. I have only just started using it and will maybe post more about it as I understand the features more, but as a simple router to move traffic between custom networks it is really simple to use and they even provide an OVA for ease of deployment.
Step 1)
Download the OVA from here, open it in VMware Workstation.
Step 2)
Once you have the VM available, go to edit settings and add a virtual NIC for each custom network you want to route. It helps at this point to make a note of the MAC Address of each vnic so that you can match them in the router and assign the correct IP to them.
Step 3)
Power on the VM and login using vyos/vyos as the username and password.
Step 4)
type
$ show Interfaces system
and you will get a list of all the interfaces and their MAC addresses… match these with the notes you have from Step 2 so you can address them properly – you will need to identify them as eth1, eth2 etc when you come to configure IP addresses.
Step 5)
enter config mode by typing
$ config
Step 6)
use the following command for each nic that requires configuration. The IP address that you use will become the Default Gateway on each guest machine you have on that custom network
$ set interface ethernet ethx address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/xx
Step 7)
check all is as it should be
$ show interfaces ethernet
Commit the changes
$ commit
Save the changes
$ save
Once you have done this, you should be able to route traffic across the custom networks.
Steps taken from this video on youtube – all credits to 15 minutes or less