VCF 9 released
So much to cover….and its only been a few days…..
Already did a few deploys and imports of existing environments.
Works well for both, just polishing up the process & planning documentation…
TLS 1.3 by default for everything!
NSX now has VPCs! Daniel Krieger’s post is a great read.
Broadcom VCF 9 What’s New post.
Broadcom VVF 9 What’s New post.
What’s New with Licensing post from VMexplorer
VCF 9 – deprecation list
Quite a few things have been deprecated, so just a good list provided by Christian Mohn.
In short…Auto Deploy, vVols, ELM (Enhanced Linked Mode), Host Profiles, baseline in Update Manager, and hybrid vSAN configurations
VCF 9 – Automatic Certificate Renewals
Just gotta get my CA configured appropriately….
Then to give this a go….
Broadcom Blog post is here.
vSAN 9
Now with Global Dedupe (post-process)!
…well, within a cluster, at least……and limited (for now) availability.
vSAN Data Protection with 1 minute RPO.
VM replication across clusters.
Stretched Cluster get Site Maintenance Mode as well as the ability to have a “manual takeover” if they lose 2 sites of the 3 in their stretched cluster.
Duncan on vSAN 9 post.
vLCM (vSphere Lifecycle Manager) what’s new
Mentioned in there posts….has new behavior when dealing with Image Based Management in a cluster.
As Baselines are deprecated since 8.x was released, the planned migration to Image Based management had some constraints that were tough to swallow.
A vocal community led to some changes, and you can easily find them written out in the VVF What’s New post above.
In short, up to 4 Images (different vendors or server models) per cluster.
VCF 9 – Need passwords for your deployed appliances?
Here’s a way to get them from the API.
Another way is to use the GUI to reset the one password you need, then rotate it when you are done.
Blog Post is here.
NVMe Memory Tiering
Introduced in vSphere 8, this is a cool capability.
Most folks run out of RAM before anything else.
With this capability, you can “add RAM” by adding NVMe capacity to your host, adding “more RAM” into your hosts.
Was excited when this came out, but saw limited adoption in production, though I put that off into hardware lifecycles.
Homelabbers do use this though…
Is it right for you?….we’ll see.
Written out in the VVF What’s New post above
NSX VPCs
Good write up by Daniel Krieger
Somewhat long read, but the topic dictates that…
Will take a couple weeks for me to get up to speed on the details of this….
vSAN – is RDMA right for you?
Remember…implementing technology just for the sake of implementing technology doesn’t help anyone. Only if it solves a business requirements.
That said…
Is it worth the cost (minimal) and complexity (nominal) to offload some CPU cycles with RDMA?
That’s up to you, but I believe in the K.I.S.S. principle….
this post even makes comparisons with FC, above and beyond the RDMA discussion.
VMware Blog post is here.
ESXi 7.x still running – patching problems
Was led this way with a customer who has vSphere 8 deployed, but still has a couple of 7.x ESXi clusters (hardware only support version 7).
Having problems patching that cluster.
Found Broadcom Article ID# 340445 which describes the error perfectly.
Too bad there is no resolution….so much for supporting it till October 2025…
vSphere Admins Sample Scripts
Nicely presented, short & sweet.
VM Infrastructure 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
AWS offers EVS (or ‘Elastic’ VMware Service)
This was a popular use case, before Broadcom crippled it.
Now, AWS has worked through the kinks to bring this capability back.
Those using VMware Cloud on AWS, it looks like you can use your own VPC now!
AWS Blog post is here.
Veeam Backup Support for VCF 9?
I’m waiting too.
Veeam KB2443 covers supported versions of vSphere, uh….VCF.
Homelabs – no 10-GbE NICs, or vSAN ESA Compatible Gear?
William Lam has you covered (of course).
Blog post on how to deal with no 10-GbE NICs precheck.
Blog post on how to deploy ESA without ‘supported’ hardware.
Asus AX86U Pro – now with VLANs and proper Guest Network isolation
Now I can shut off my Guest WAP…..
Check out the Asus Support doc.
USA’s Air Traffic Control – “modern” technology
Glad they are fast-tracked to do some updates.
They apparently still use Windows 95 with 3.5″ floppies to do their job.
Ars Technica post is here.
Other than in a VM, anyone think they can find Windows 95 drivers for some of the new desktops/laptops being sold today?
P.S. – Windows 95 is 30 years old!
Apple, Google, Facebook, etc – passwords exposed
Yea…you know what to do.
This is getting repetitive….
Forbes post is here.
Prism Central 2024.3.1.2 released
Not showing up yet in LCM (in case you’re looking for it).
“now works correctly in environments where ICMP is blocked.”
Why would someone do that? security by obscurity….really?
Network Latency callout between Prism Central and Prism Element (clusters)…
< 150-ms
Nutanix Blog post is 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)