VCF, VCFE, VCF for CSP, & VVF
VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation)
VCFCE (VMware Cloud Foundation Edge)
VCF for CSP (VMware Cloud Foundation for Cloud Service Providers)
VVF (VMware vSphere Foundation)
All the components included, their potential add-ons listed out.
Just forget about any of the other options …their last gasp is in vSphere 8.x.
Another William Lam post is here.
Licensing VCF 9.0
Kudos where they are due….
Managing & Consuming licenses has gotten a whole lot easier.
Yes, you need to manage your keys in Broadcom Business Services Portal.
The short?
Your company gets a license key. https://vcf.broadcom.com/
You can carve out sections if needed (to split up between orgs).
Easy to reclaim licenses.
oh yea…. 90 day evals of VCF after deployment!!!
VMware Blog post is here.
vSphere Enterprise Plus & Standard are deprecated
That means dead. No more.
Their last breath of life is vSphere 8.0 update 3.
Want vSphere 9?
You must get VCF or VVF to do so.
Blog post is here, and yes, the document it points to states it.
VCF 9 – deprecation list
Quite a few things have been deprecated, so just a good list provided by Christian Mohn.
In short…vCLS (so enable retreat-mode,) Auto Deploy, vVols, ELM (Enhanced Linked Mode), Host Profiles, baseline in Update Manager, & hybrid vSAN configurations
vCenter ELM (Enhanced Linked Mode)- replacement
Since ELM is no more…what to replace it with?
Well, first, you have to be in the same VCF Fleet. Why Fleet?
VCF Operations is outside of the Management Domain, so it is part of “Fleet”
So any vCenter within that Fleet can use this SSO approach.
You can even create “groups” vCenter servers together for permissions.
VMware Blog post is here.
VCF & Microsoft CA Integration
The 2 x big things to note, its that your CA must respond to HTTPS requests, and that the template you build must have NO SPACEs in its name.
Once you have that prepped, integration is fast & easy.
This blog post captures it nicely.
Storage in VCF 9 (well…vSphere)
So quite a few things got tweaked in version 9 around storage.
NFS 3 get TRIM support.
NFS 4 can encrypt data in transit.
End to End (E2E) 4kn support
SE Sparse Disks (Space Efficient Sparse Virtual Disks) for NFS & VMFS-5+.
vNVMe 1.4 spec support – Support for Write Zero command.
iSCSI Multiple Connections per Session support.
VMware Blog post is here.
Duncan Epping post on some of the new vSAN 9 features….
Global Deduplication
vSAN Stretched Cluster Site Maintenance Mode
vSAN Data Protection and VMware Live Recovery feature
No more vSAN Data Protection appliance!!!
VCF Install – Offline Depot Configuration
William Lam must not sleep.
While his example shows how to do this on a Synology….
You can now see what it takes to do this in your “Dark Site” for an offline depot.
William Lam blog post is here.
DBaaS in VCF
Yes, DBaaS (Data Base as a Service) is in VCF 9.0.
Cormac Hogan has been writing about this for a couple of years,
and here is Cormac’s latest blog post on the topic.
A great read which addresses the different audiences that this covers.
So much of this is why I’ve been a champion of Nutanix Database for years.
vDefend integrations with VCF
VPC-Aware Lateral Security
Self-Service Micro-segmentation
Global IPS/IDS Policy Management
IDS/IPS Signature Portal
Geo-IP Filtering
Not my area of expertise, but I’m sure the security team will take note.
Could be a lot of benefits here, as I read through the highlights…
VMware Blog post is here.
VMware PowerCLI gets renamed to VCF PowerCLI
Just run the following to get updated:
Uninstall-Module -Name VMware.PowerCLI
Install-Module -Name VCF.PowerCLI
Everything still works as it has in the past per Broadcom announcement/post.
….and it aligns with VCF versioning, so it is version 9.x.
VMware Blog post is here, and gets a bit deeper.
VCF SDK 9.0 for Python & Java
For our programmatic friends…
Need to integrate your new VCF with applications & solutions that drive your business and its outcomes?
Check out the APIs that drive PowerCLI, Terraform, & Ansible (among others).
VMware Blog post is here.
Enhanced vMotionfor VMs with vGPU
Frank Denneman post on many of the details of why these improvements were necessary, though its all in VCF 9.
VCF Operations – create your first Super Metric
Creating a super metric….well explained…
Blog post is here.
Ultimate LAB Resource for VCF 9.0
A nice guide.
How to use older CPUs, to newer SmartNICs.
William Lam’s post is here.
ESXi and CDP
Since we were digging up this info for a customer…
I noticed that ESXi supported CDP, which when I think back, used to only be supported on vDS.
Broadcom Article ID 324750 shows how to configure CDP on ESXi hosts on standard vSwitches (all screenshots & examples show Standard Switches).
To Upgrade your VMX version, or not to?
Have this discussion all the time….
Do you upgrade your VMs to the latest Hardware Version (often referenced as VMX version or compatibility), or just leave it alone.
Well, don’t consume things just because you can.
BUT…if a VM needs a feature only exposed in the latest Hardware Version (VMX version)….you are on the path to upgrade.
Broadcom Article ID 315390 states you can, & provides instructions on how to do so,…BUT it comes with some “it depends” statements (in the Article).
One of which states to have VMware Tools up to date first!
Windows VM unresponsive
Windows Event Log shows: Reset to device, \Device\RaidPort0, was issued
So the situation that created this is pretty unique (right now anyway).
Using NVMe disks to the VM (doesn’t matter what physical storage is).
Added another disk to the VM….didn’t pay attention….
it got added as a LSI SCSI disk, along with a new SCSI controller.
I changed the disk to NVMe, but forgot to remove the SCSI Controller.
So…a SCSI controller with no disks is what caused this.
Old OS too.
On Windows 2022…the default is to add a Parvirtual SCSI controller, which would not have caused the issue.
Broadcom Article ID 316553 is here..
Microsoft Intune – issue or not at issue?
last week, Intune Security Baselines had issues if you upgraded from 23H2 to 24H2…but only if you deviated from recommended settings…
Let the expert tell you about it.
Jon’s latest post is here.
Monster & CareerBuilder file for Bankruptcy
Never thought I’d see that….
Yahoo Finance article is here.
Dutch Energy sues Broadcom for Support
When someone wants to pay you for support, you take it, right?
You don’t strong-arm them into buying something new at an increased cost….
“…Senior Hague judge Mr HJ Vetter writes that VMware and Broadcom are required to provide support to RWS after 22 July 2025 for a period of two years at the most, to allow it time to phase out its use of VMware’s software.”
The Register post is here.
Market Basket & Local Brands
Like to shop local?
Well, we all love Market Basket (or is it Demoulas?) and I caught this post of theirs highlighting some of the local brands from MA, ME, NH, & RI.
Market Basket post is here.
Nutanix v4 APIs – deploy VMs from template
Using Python SDK and REST APIs…
Nutanix Dev post is here.
Nutanix MST (Multi Snapshot Technology)
Cool way to take your snapshots to a public cloud (or even on premises)
to S3/Blob storage.
You can have a Nutanix Cluster there, or not.
You can mix & match the options to meet your Recovery as well as DR needs.
Nutanix documentation is here.
Nutanix Cross-Cluster Live Migrate
Live migrate a VM between 2 closets?
Sure,….just verify the prerequisites or run the script!
Blog post & script are here.
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix .NEXT 2026 – April 7-9, Chicago, IL
PluralSight
vBrownBag
VMware Explore 2025 – Aug 25-28, Las Vegas
VMware Hands On Labs
VMware Explore 2024 Sessions (William Lam’s easier to search list version)