ESXi 5.1 host loses default gateway

[rtr1129]

I have an ESXi host with one pNIC and two vSwitches. The "outside" vSwitch is connected to the pNIC and pulls DHCP for it's VMkernel port, and the other is for an internal LAN for VMs and has a static IP for its VMkernel port. There is a firewall VM that connects the two vSwitches and handles NAT. It all works fine until the host reboots and pulls DHCP on the "outside" vSwitch, but then the "inside" vSwitch takes the same default gateway as the outside vSwitch. The firewall VM still handles a VPN tunnel fine, so my offsite backups keep running, but when the "inside" VMkernel's gateway gets changed I can't connect to it over the VPN tunnel. I can change the gateway back manually and it works as expected, but it doesn't stick. See attached screenshots to get an idea of the config. It's ESXi 5.1.0 799733.

[weinstein5 · Accepted solution]

The issue is an ESXi hosts vmkernel can only have a single gatewat address assigned -

[rtr1129]

Thanks, good to know. I got this working by adding this line to /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh:

esxcli network ip route ipv4 add --gateway 10.18.3.1 --network 192.168.61.0/24