VCF 9.1 announced!
Feels like a totally new release….
vCenter 8.03 as a Workload Domain?
vSAN replication from any (VMFS, NFS, vSAN)?
Global Deduplication (within a vSAN ESA cluster)?
Native S3 (via Automation)?
Broadcom News post from 5/5/2026 is here.
Looks like the documentation area is getting a facelift too…
Tommy Grot’s take on it on Virtual Bytes…
…and Tommy’s VCF Upgrade Path Advisor Tool
VCF 9.0 documentation was 8304 pages….
VCF 9.1 documentation is now at 9,445 pages…
What’s New in 9.1 documentation.
VMware Blog post on What’s New in VCF 9.1
Planning your migration to vSphere/VVF/VCF 9.1?
Found out about the VCF 9.1 Upgrade Planning Tool
…via William Lam’s post.
Still needs a bit of polish, but its a great start!
VCF 9.x – Skylake & Cascade Lake Support path
Now supported, but requires Technical Qualification.
It feels backwards to me, as the work is all on our part, not on VMware & the hardware vendors…..BUT, at least it is now there….
Blog post capturing what you need to do is here.
vSAN 9.1 – what’s new
Duncan Epping’s post goes into it.
Cyber Recovery in an on-prem clean room
Global Dedupe & compression
Auto-Raid (let vSAN configure your Storage Policies), on by default for all clusters!
Peter Koehler’s post on Auto-Raid is here.
VMware Blog Post on Native S3 Object Storage in vSAN 9.1
VMware Blog post on vSAN (ESA) 9.1 Protection & Recovery
VCF 9.1 and AI
Its a multi-part blog series….
VMware Blog post is here.
OVF Tool 5.1 released
I’m surprised it didn’t get a new version of 9.1.
Release Notes are here.
Download link is here (no login required!).
Build a VCF Offline Depot
…and want to make it simple to build, … & take advantage of a proven config
Tommy Grot has a post & script that has you covered.
vCenter VM – finally…a VMX upgrade
Since 5.5, VMware’s vCenter VM has been running at vmx-10.
That means it has been missing out on any benefits of new VM features/capabilites since 2013 (5.5’s release year).
Now, it is up to VMX-17 (vSphere 7 compatibility).
While not current, that’s in a way better position than in the past.
…now for all the other pieces of VCF to do the same….
Looks like you have to use the “reduced downtime upgrade method”, or that you can shut down the VM and do it manually.
VMware Blog post is here.
Free Learning – GitHub Repo
AWS Workshops
KodeKloud
Nutanix University
Nutanix Next 2027– March 30 – April 1, Las Vegas, NV
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)