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VCF 9.1 - Automated VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) & VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Nested Lab Deployment

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Nested ESX continues to be a popular way to explore and learn about VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), it is also the basis for the VCF Holodeck solution.

With the release of VCF 9.1, Nested ESXi VMs can now run on physical hosts with NVMe Tiering enabled, no workarounds required. In addition, you can extend the benefits of NVMe Tiering to a Nested ESX VM by applying the following VM Advanced Setting.

The easiest and quickest way to deploy a Nested ESX VM is to my Nested ESX Virtual Appliance, which has been refreshed for 9.1!

Note: The latest Nested ESX 9.1 Virtual Appliance no longer comes with default password, you will need to specify that as part of the OVF deployment.

While I have personally switched from using a nested VCF deployments to physical setup, mainly due to lack of resources, I know many of you do have sufficient capacity to run a full VCF deployment in a Nested environment.

I have also refreshed my VMware Cloud Foundation Nested Lab (VCF) Fleet Deployment script to support both VCF and VVF 9.1


Here is a screenshot of the initial deployment that takes ~25 minutes to deploy three Nested ESX VM, initialize the VCF Installer, sync from a VCF Offline Depot, generate the deployment JSON and then automatically start the VCF Fleet deployment. 😎

VCF 9.1 - Updated VCF Design Blueprints & VCF Fleet Latency Diagrams for VCF Architects

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VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 is now generally available! 🥳

In addition to the revamped VCF 9.1 Technical Documentation which includes the 9.1 release notes, which everyone should be reviewing in detail, we have released a number of new resources for our VCF architects and practitioners to help you on your 9.1 journey! 🧠

VCF Design Blueprints

ℹ️ Direct URL link to the VCF Design Blueprints

In addition to refreshing the VCF Fleet Design Blueprints for 9.1, we now have VCF Blueprints spanning a number of topics across: Edge, Fleet Management, Monitoring, Alerting, Troubleshooting, Workload Consumption, Lateral Security, Data Protection, Disaster and Cyber Recovery!

  • Infrastructure Modernization
    • VCF Fleet in a Single Site with Minimal Footprint
    • VCF Fleet in a Single Site
    • VCF Fleet with Multiple Sites in a Single Region
    • VCF Fleet with Multiple Sites Across Multiple Regions
    • VCF Fleet with Multiple Sites in a Single Region plus Additional Region(s)
    • VCF Fleet Management
    • VCF Monitoring & Alerting
    • VCF Troubleshooting
    • VCF Edge for Single Node with ArgoCD
    • VCF Edge for Government & Defense
    • VCF Edge for Manufacturing
  • Application Modernization
    • VCF Self-Service Multi-Tenant Private Cloud Consumption
    • VCF vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Consumption
    • VCF Private AI Services Consumption
  • Security Modernization
    • VCF Lateral Security with vDefend
    • VCF Component Backup and Restore
    • VCF Instance Backup and Restore
    • VCF Fleet Disaster Recovery
    • VCF Cyber Recovery

VCF Fleet Latency

ℹ️ Direct URL link to the VCF Fleet Latency Diagram

The VCF 9.0 Fleet Latency Diagram has been an extremely popular resource since its release with VCF Architects and Practitioners. With the new VCF 9.1 constructs that were introduced, the VCF Fleet Latency Diagram has also been updated and is part of the 9.1 release which you can access by going to the ports.broadcom.com and navigating to Network Diagrams section.

 

VCF 9.1 - Comprehensive VCF Installer & SDDC Manager Configuration Workarounds for Lab Deployments

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With the announcement of VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1, I know many of you are eager to start planning for 9.1 and get it into your lab environment for hands-on experience as the first step toward pre-production validation.

Unless you are among the few with adequate resources, including servers listed on the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG), most lab environments are resource constrained in one way or another.

To help expedite your 9.1 deployment for non-production usage, I have documented the various VCF Installer and SDDC Manager configuration workarounds that can used for lab deployments, especially for functional testing and/or for educational purpose.

I will continue to update this page with new information, so be sure to bookmark for your single reference!

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