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VCF 9.1 - Updated Method to Reset Identity Broker from previously managed VCF Operations for VCF Single Sign-On (SSO)

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Over the weekend, I had to re-deploy a portion of my VCF 9.1 Fleet, including VCF Operations, VCF Management Services, VCF License Server, SDDC Manager and VCF Automation, due to some workflows I was testing.

Luckily, my core SDDC components vCenter, NSX and vSAN was not touched and I could simply re-use those components by running the VCF Installer Import/Converge process to quickly rebuild my VCF 9.1 Fleet!

Prior to deleting VCF Operations, I had VCF Single Sign-On (SSO) configured and I wanted to make sure the core SDDC components were properly cleaned up. I successfully ran through the VCF SSO unjoin operation for all components and cleaned up the vCenter Server Advanced Setting (config.OPERATIONS.vcf.sso.ops.cluster.id), which was required with VCF 9.0.x before you could add it to a new VCF SSO configuration.


After my VCF 9.1 Fleet was re-deployed, the first thing I wanted to go setup was VCF SSO and I noticed the configuration button was grayed out and it had the following message:

No VCF instance available due to one of the following: no existing instance, invalid license, version below 9.0, setup in progress, already configured via another Operations or running ELM.

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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.