VMware Cloud Foundation with AVN and Static Routes but No BGP

In my previous post Home Lab Step-by-Step-vCF 4.2.1 install using VLC, we deployed the SDDC environment using VMware Lab Constructor with AVN and BGP, and with VLC you have an option to do it without AVN as well which would be a scenario where you wish to leverage VLAN backed networks only. Now, I am talking about the use case where you want to use AVN (Overlay segments), but do not want north-south routing to happen using dynamic routing protocol BGP. I didn't find any written or official document which explains the process it may be because whole idea of VCF is to bring more automation to the SDDC and using static routes every time we add a network adds more manual efforts.  

Having said that, though automation has its benefits, but when it comes to network you might have a constraint or may be a better design justification for using static routing over dynamic. For example, customer has limited routes which are less in number, along with customer only adds/deletes limited number of networks in a year, then they would want to go with static routing. Or may be just to keep the control in hand they would want to keep using static routing.

Now we know what are the requirements for setting up AVN's with BGP, now I am going to lay down the steps to deploy the environment with static routes.

Home LAB step by step Networking using VMware workstation

In my Home Lab series we covered everything from a physical ESXi Host perspective, however as highlighted by many readers most of us do not have server and wish to do the lab using VMware workstation, trickiest part is networking. How to achieve networking same as a DC and route multiple VLANs.

Thanks to my friend Mr Vaibhav Tiwari who helped me understand VMware workstation product as a whole, and it is really good for performing labs with limited resources, if not all but most of the labs can be covered with it.

How to resolve "VMware Hypervisor Recovery" ESXi 7 update 2 install or upgrade

If you are upgrading or installing your physical server which supports ESXi version 7 update 2 with a warning that it might not be supported with future releases, then you are very likely to face this screen "VMware Hypervisor Recovery, and the best part it doesn't move forward but gets stuck. It can become an issue if this happens with an ESXi host which runs production workloads, and you might not have time to rollback.

I faced same issue and thought of writing this post for you, to help with the steps required to work around the situation. VMware would surely fix it with future releases.