In part 3 we did our first bit of automation using Ansible to set up the base config for VyOS, In this part we will go over defining our networks and everything needed for a functioning network.

Step 1 - New roles

Lets add a role to define our network and a playbook to run to create them, we will also need a new group_vars we will use lab as in the last part we created a group called vyos and lab and put our firewall under lab and the lab group as a child of vyos. Your directory should now look like the example below with these additions.

In Part 2 we went over initial configuration of VyOS including setting up:

• Interfaces
• SSH
• Static routes
• DNS
• DHCP servers
• DNS forwarding
• SNAT
• Firewall rules

Now we want I want to do this in a more automated fashion, my goto is Ansible for something like this configuration management.

VyOS documentation on Automation with Ansible is a bit sparse, I may put a PR in to add some of these examples.

There are some good modules in the vyos.vyos Ansible collection which I may migrate a lot of this to use If they work well enough, but for now we will focus on the vyos_config and using a jinja file for templating.

In Part 1 - Setting up SDN we went over setting up Proxmox SDN to create a network inside a network with VXLAN. In this post we will go over the initial set up for VyOS including setting up:

• Interfaces
• SSH
• Static routes
• DNS
• DHCP servers
• DNS forwarding
• SNAT
• Firewall rules

At the moment, our VyOS firewall is unconfigured, can’t connect to the Internet, and our VMs on this vxlan network cannot either.

This is going to be a multi-part series around my homelab, specifically around Vyos the Open-source Networking OS and Firewall.

• Part 2 - Configuring Vyos
• Part 3 - Configuring Vyos with Ansible
• Part 4 - Configuring Vyos with Jinja Templates + Ansible
• Part 5 - Configuring Vyos Firewall with Jinja + Ansible

First of all, Why would I want a network inside a network? Well, Isolation from my main network is the main one, secondly, it has been fun to learn about.