Broadcom Change to Download Token
This has been true since early September…can’t believe I missed it…
Just be aware that you have to update your Broadcom Tokens….
It has to do with the end of your subscription, so you’ll see it eventually….
As with Broadcom, a poorly worded post leaves a lot of question….
Broadcom post is here.
Today I Learned…
Windows OVAs can be deployed using answer files in vSphere.
Most vSphere admins are accustomed to building a VM, marking it as a Template VM, and then using a predefined answer file (Customization Specification) to have it go through Sysprep and anything else (including setting IP, hostname, and domain join).
Not sure when this became possible, it changes things when using Content Libraries. It is not possible to sync templates without ELM, which is gone now (you use vCenter Groups in VCF Operations to get the equivalent).
So, using OVAs and Answer files together provides the same functionality!
I assume this means linux distros will use CloudInit in the same way….
vSAN 9 – Global Deduplication
Been waiting for this….
ESA only, and does away with OSA’s disk group limitation for deduplication (which was per host, and then per disk group on that host).
It is available with VCF 9.0.1, but on a per request basis.
Duncan Epping’s post has info, links to podcasts where he discusses this, and a link to request this in VCF 9.0.1.
Looking forward to seeing it as part of the base product of VCF…
vSphere Memory Tiering – add RAM to ESXi host via NVMe drive
This has been around since vSphere 8.
Add an NVMe drive, and increase the size of the RAM in your ESXi host.
Relatively cheap and effective way to increase your useable RAM.
Yes, you still need RAM.
This blog post covers the how & why (it has 3 parts, all linked on this page).
VCF Operations – Identify & Clean Up Orphaned Disks
Walkthrough on how to take a report, or run it via API.
How to clean it up easily?….that depends…. 😉
Brock Peterson blog post is here.
vCenter Converter 9.0 – available now
Converter has been a great tool for many years….
Need to P2V or V2V?
What about using V2V to “clean up” a VM that has 183 snapshots starting from 5 years ago?
You can find it in the “Free Software” section of My Downloads.
Link to the download (Broadcom login required).
Link to Product Docs are here.
VCF Software Depot Structure
William Lam has posted about this often, and done it via a Synology (for us homelabbers).
If you run your software depot in Online Mode, no problem.
Once you decide for Offline Mode, additional work is required, and hosting the Software Depot needs to be done right.
Lengthy post, but it talks through all steps to get this done….
William Lam’s post is here.
VMware Holodeck 9.0.1 released
Holodeck lets you deploy VCF on a single node ESXi host (or even a cluster).
The initial 9.0 had its bugs….hopefully, they are all ironed out…
VMware Blog post is here.
F5 to Avi Load Balancer Migration
Migrations happen, and moving from F5 to Avi Load Balancer is possible.
According to the post, here is why: F5 configurations are often static and CLI-driven. Avi supports declarative APIs, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) tools like Terraform, Ansible, Jenkins, and CI/CD pipelines for automated deployments.
Blog post is here.
AWS Outage – Design Your Apps right then
Always amazes me when any cloud provider has an outage.
Usually, it only effects 1 datacenter location or region, so it would have been easy to architect it across regions to avoid that medium probability, high impact scenario.
First I heard was local news here.
Reuters article is here.
AWS situation report here.
….and it was DNS…..
Azure Outage
Alaska Air, Heathrow Airport, Vodafone, and more were affected.
Reuters’ post is here.
Alaska Airlines Outage
…as a result of the above noted Azure Outage….
Anyone who flies dreads this kind of news….all flights grounded.
An IT issue…..I am sure that a well architected solution could have avoided that..
Wonder what the outage cost them?
Wonder if the savings were worth the outage?
Alaska Airlines statement is here.
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2026 – April 7-9, Chicago, IL
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2026 – August 31 – September 3, Las Vegas, NV
VMware Explore 2025 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)