While a capable system like the Minisforum MS-A2 (see example BOM) is great for running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 in a lab, equally capable networking hardware is just as essential.
Depending on your requirements, there are a TON of networking options in the market from low-end enterprise to prosumer hardware. One popular brand of router/switches that I have seen many folks from the VMware community deploy is from MikroTik.
RouterOS, MikroTik's operating system that runs across all their devices, provides Layer 2 and Layer 3 functionality, which is especially useful for a VCF lab environment.
My initial experience with some of MikroTik's consumer router/switches was not great as I did not realize Jumbo Frame support (MTU of 9000) was not a standard feature and while you can go larger than 1500 bytes on some devices, it was no where near the 9K that I was looking for.
