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Tips & Tricks for deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) using Holodeck

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The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Holodeck Toolkit has become quite popular amongst our field teams for quickly spinning up a fully self-contained VCF environment, running on just a single physical ESXi host for educational and hands on experience.

Internally, we have a Holodeck Google Space which has been getting quite busy where folks can ask questions but also share their own experiences and setup using Holodeck. I had noticed there were some common questions and themes that were coming up along with some neat tips and tricks from various folks, some of which I also found quite insightful.

I know some of these tips and tricks will also benefit our customers and partners looking to deploy VCF using Holodeck, so I figure I put together a consolidated list that would benefit everyone. If you have other Holodeck tips and tricks, feel free to leave a comment and happy to keep updating this page.

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What's in the new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offers?

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Since the announcement of the two new VMware offerings: VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) at the end of 2023, I have been trying to wrap my head around the new offers and to better help me understand the next level of details, I have put together several diagrams across the various offers and applicable add-ons that can be purchased.

After sharing these diagrams internally, the feedback was extremely positive and I thought I would also share these diagrams with our users and partners who might still have questions around the new offers. I have also created a short URL which you can access by going to vmwa.re/skus

In addition, we have also published a VMware KB 95927 (Inventory Script) and VMware KB 96426 (Calculator Script) that can be used to help our users understand the new licensing model which uses both CPU cores and TiB (for vSAN storage sizing), please refer to the KB articles for more details.

Changelog:

  • 11/08/24 - Updated with new SKU offers (vSphere Enterprise Plus & VCF Edge)
  • 03/20/24 - Updated with VMware Live Recovery (VLR includes LSR & LCR) and Private AI Foundation Add-On
  • 02/16/24 - Updated VCF w/CSP + new VMware by Broadcom theme colors
  • 02/13/24 - Removed 8TiB minimal purchase per new VMware KBs & updated VCF w/VMware Data Services Manager (DSM)
  • 01/12/24 - Updated VCF w/TAM, PSO and Learning Service Add-On
  • 01/09/24 - Updated VCF w/CSP Add-On and VCDR/RWR/SRM Add-On for VVS/VVEP

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)


Products & Support Services includes:

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Automating counting cores & TiBs for new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) SKUs

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Happy New Year! 🥳🎉🥂

At the end of 2023, we announced two new offerings called VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that drastically simplifies our overall vSphere-based portfolio and licensing model.

To help our users understand the new licensing model which uses both CPU cores and TiB (for vSAN storage sizing), I have created a PowerCLI function (Get-FoundationCoreAndTiBUsage) that will inventory your existing vSphere environment and provide a detailed report on the number of CPU Core and/or TiB license count that would be required whether you are considering the VVF or VCF offering.


For those familiar with my previous versions of the vSphere and vSphere+ core counting scripts, this function works in a very similar manner with the output configurable using either console or outputting it to an excel spreadsheet for further processing. For more details on the calculations, where to download and how to use the PowerCLI function, please see VMware KB 95927.