Everyone knows how difficult and expensive it can be to build a personal lab, yet that is often where practitioners and architects gain their most valuable hands-on experience with VMware technologies.
Earlier this year, Intel reached out and shared that they would be attending several VMUG Connect events to showcase how organizations can leverage the latest Intel Xeon 6 processors for AI inferencing using Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (AMX).
Intel was also interested in doing something cool and fun for the VMUG community at these events, so after brainstorming a few ideas, we landed on what seemed like the obvious answer: giving away a system to an attendee that would allow them to get hands-on with AI workloads running on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)! 😆
So what is the giveaway? It is a Lenovo Thinkstation P5 Workstation with Intel W5-255X (14c/28t) with 256GB memory and 3 x 512GB NVMe drives, which is a pretty slick and generous giveaway if you ask me!? 🔥
This is definitely another good reason to attend the remaining VMUG Connect events in Dallas (June 9-11) and Orlando (Oct 20-22), so be sure to sign up for the Private AI with Intel Xeon session!
✦Ready to modernize your private cloud?
Join #vExpert Kannan Mani @kantwit at #VMUGConnect Dallas (June 9–11). Learn to accelerate Private AI with Intel Xeon, & master short-lived SSL/TLS certificate automation within the #VCF stack.
✦Register today! https://t.co/C4RvHrHCZW pic.twitter.com/0Ca57oZgHZ
— VMware Community Activities (@VMwareCommunity) May 29, 2026
Since I had mentioned running on VCF, you might be asking how ... it is just a single system? Hint: It is NOT Nested ESX 😎
This is where my VCF 9.1 in a Box solution can help, which was just recently refreshed with latest VCF 9.1 tweaks and configurations.
The repo contains working examples for one, two and three node deployments along with all the supplmental instructions and scripts that I have created to make this as seamless as possible.
The one node reference is based off of using the Lenovo Thinkstation P5, which was provided by the Intel team and two and three node configuration is based off of the popular Minisforum MS-A2.
Here are a couple of screenshots showing a complete VCF 9.1 deployment running on the Lenovo Thinkstation P5 with vSAN ESA and NVMe Tiering!
I would also like to give a big shoutout to the Micron team for supporting my testing efforts. The original NVMe drives that arrived with the system were a tad too small, but with help from the Intel team, Micron quickly provided a pair of 1TB Micron 4600 NVMe devices that were perfect for both vSAN ESA and NVMe Tiering! 🙏
Over the next several weeks, I plan to cover adding articles in post-deployment configurations from setting up NSX VPC using the new NSX Virtual Network Appliance (VNA) over the traditional NSX Edges and Distributed Transit Gateway (DTGW), vSphere Supervisor consuming VPC and enabling vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and some AI workload examples that can take advantage of the Intel AMX instructions! Stay tuned, especially if you are one of the lucky owners of the Lenovo Thinkstation P5 or simply using your own systems running VCF 9.1!
Thanks for the comment!