When should you override the default gateway for this adapter?

[Viewaskew]

Basic setup, local kernel vswitches for management, vmotion and storage (NFS) and one non kernel for data etc.

I can override the default gateway for the storage kernel vswitch and just wondering rather than it going through the default gateway, I change it to the DGW for the storage VLAN. I have this running on a test host and have no issues with access to storage.

Does it make any difference changing this and if not then just leave it and don't override the DGW?

Thanks

[NicolasAlauzet]

Assuming that your management Network is a Routed network, you should not change the DG for the additional VMkernels.

ESXi can manage multiple vmkernels in differents network segments but only supports one (1) DG. Usually, its used in the Management network and keept as it is.

If you have a particular need to use routes in an aditional vmkerner interface (vmotion, storage, etc) you also can use static routes.(VMware Knowledge Base )

DG is used for traffic to go to everything that is unknown by the original IP of the comunication. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_gateway )

It is recomenden that you use in plain L2 the access to the storage.

(https://www.vmware.com/content/dam/digitalmarketing/vmware/en/pdf/techpaper/vmware-nfs-bestpractices-white-paper-en.pdf )

Hope that helps!

Cheers

N

[NathanosBlightc]

You should read theof vSphere Networking carefully, especially VMKernel and TCP/IP stack and when you need to change them for overriding default gateway and routing traffics. For more information please read this link too

[Lalegre]

You only should override the default gateway on the different VMkernel adapters in case you need to connect to the same service that is located on another network, for example vSAN Stretch Cluster. If you are deploying all the stack inside one datacenter and even with the hosts all connected to the same ToRs is does not make sense to have a Router Network just maintaint a plain L2.

Another case could be if you want to do Cross vMotion between sites and you do not have the same L2 for that service in particular. Then you will need to configure a gateway.