Forum Discussion

buulam's avatar
buulam
Icon for Admin rankAdmin
Jan 30, 2023

Favorite hypervisor for home lab?

In publishing Home Lab Server Build Using an Intel NUC and Free VMware ESXi 7  and supplemental video, I got several folks suggesting I try Proxmox. In conversation with AlexBCT , it sounds like it i...
cloud
Kai_Wilke's avatar
Kai_Wilke
Icon for MVP rankMVP

Tried VirtualBox and VMWare but then finally switched to Hyper-V on my Windows PC. The reason to use Hyper-V is an absolute flexible VLAN and NAT configuration.

Background: My LTM-VE has plenty interfaces to play with, some of them in different route domains so that for example VS-RD1 can have a pool objects pointing to VS-RD2 as pool member. I basically just need an F5 without any backend web servers to simulate everything. 

Hyper-V allows absolute transperent network access from my PC to all F5 Interfaces, between different F5 interfaces and also allows all F5 interfaces to have transparent internet access using my PC as default-gw.

Definately worth a try if you are using a Windows PC. 

Cheers, Kai

buulam's avatar
buulam
Icon for Admin rankAdmin
Jan 31, 2023

Not a Windows user here but that's interesting. Is this network interface setting different than Bridging mode on VMWare Workstation?

  • Kai_Wilke's avatar
    Kai_Wilke
    Icon for MVP rankMVP
    Jan 31, 2023

    I really struggeled to have a router sitting in between all VNETs allowing transparent access while granting internet access via my PC at the same time independently what connection I'm using (VPN, WLAN, LAN).

    Hyper-V just did that by adding a couple internal VNETs and executing a single Set-NetNAT command per VNET. My PC has become a L3-Router and SNAT gateway to external networks. No manuall bridging and/or constant VM reconfiguration needed...

    Tbh... I was really impressed that Hyper-V is doing something way better than ESX or VirtualBox 🤣

    This is the config^^ 

    Cheers, Kai