Setting up 2 gateways to different networks? and the help article everyone posts doesn't work.

[cameraman_2]

I have the same issue although I have 2 different networks and 2 defferent Gateways that I need to connect to for internet access. One network has the 99.999% uptime and the other is a 99.9% so it depends on how much the customer needs. So how do you get them to both talk to the outside world? I have both nics setup on different vswitches, vswitch0 and vswitch1. The issue is with the vKernal defualt gateway. If I remove it no connectivity to the outside at all, only on both networks internally. Then which ever one I set the defualt gateway to is the one that can access the outside. This article does not work for me, http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=200142.... It won't let me edit the ip range nor delete to it from the list saying, "Error: Unable to delete route to 199.200.xxx.xxx/28 this route is automatically created based on the  IP address and netmask of one of the VMkernel TCP/IP  interfaces."

[Josh26]

i have the same issue

Same issue as who?

That article you quoted refers to static routes. This does not equate to multiple default gateways.

If you really want a server to have multiple paths to the Internet, it needs to be capable announcing a dedicated IP space to an upstream router, and this typically falls to using BGP on an enterprise router, not a host OS.

Simply adding two default gateways to any device is a contradiction of network logic, it doesn't work on Linux or Windows, and it doesn't work under ESXi. Windows is even helpful enough to popup a GUI if you try it, effectively stating "you are probably doing something wrong".

The default router behaviour you explained is exactly as expected. If you remove a default gateway, where does the host send Internet traffic? It doesn't know. If you set only one, now it knows how to access the Internet, using that one gateway. If you were able to set two gateways, which one does it use? How does it detect failover if no protocol for that detection is in place?

[cameraman_2]

I deleted it from another thread and moved it over here 2 seconds after I posted it so that is my I said I was having the same issue.

Ok that makes a lot of since now. No one mentioned that to me and I see now in linux it has the one set as the default now.

[rickardnobel]

cameraman_2 wrote:

I have the same issue although I have 2 different networks and 2 defferent Gateways that I need to connect to for internet access. One network has the 99.999% uptime and the other is a 99.9% so it depends on how much the customer needs.

The best way is to do as suggested above and keep a single IP address for default gateway from the ESXi hosts and if possible create redundancy at the network layer between your two routers. Possible methods for this is Cisco HSRP or non-vendor specific VRRP.