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Automated Nested Lab Deployment on SDDC Part 1: VMware Cloud on AWS

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While preparing for this years VMworld, I had the unique opportunity to work across a number of VMware Cloud SDDC solutions such as VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS), Azure VMware Solution (AVS), Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) and Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS). During the the development of several demos, I found it invaluable to be able to deploy a Nested vSphere environment to validate my configurations prior to connecting our real vSphere on-premises infrastructure.

Putting aside VMworld demos, this can certainly be extended to other use cases such as accelerated pilots, proof of concepts and lab/development purposes. Customers have been leveraging Nested Virtualization technology for more than a decade plus now and it definitely makes sense that they would also want to do the same for certain workloads running within a VMware Cloud SDDC. With that said, Nested ESXi is not officially supported by VMware or on any other VMware-based platform.

As part of building my VMworld demos, I also had spent some time on creating some automation that would make it easier for me to re-deploy these Nested Lab environments and also being aware of the specific VMware Cloud SDDC solutions, so that I only have a single script to maintain. In case folks are also interested in being able to do this, you can follow this 4-part blog series which I will be kicking it off with VMware Cloud on AWS (VMConAWS).

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Using PowerCLI and vSphere Tags to create/migrate HCX Mobility Groups to VMware Cloud SDDC

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If using your voice to create an HCX Mobility Group and initiate a migration to a VMware Cloud SDDC is not your thing, here is a more practical example using PowerCLI which includes HCX cmdlets that was introduced awhile back.


Here are the 12 configurable variables that you will need to update based on your own environment.

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VMworld 2020 Demo - Voice activated workload migration to VMware Cloud SDDCs

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One of my favorite but also most stressful part of preparing for a VMworld session is creating the demos. Even with a "virtual" VMworld this year, I personally felt it was even more stressful than a physical VMworld.

I have been presenting with Emad Younis for a number of years now and every year, we always end up with crazy ideas without thinking through all the feasibility aspects. This year was certainly no different and while working on our demo this year, I was seriously questioning my sanity and even the actual return on investment (ROI), if such a thing exists!? 😂

In case you have not watched our session, check out HCP132: Planes, Trains and Workload Mobility, you can watch it for free and see the full demo.


I was really floored by all the positive feedback that we had received from attendees which includes the VMworld survey but also on Twitter and Slack. This was one of my favorite tweet and response 😀

We really appreciate all the feedback and it definitely made up for some of the late nights where I was about to give up. I know a few of you were asking for more details about the demo and so this blog post will be focusing on some of the information I was not able to get to during the VMworld session.

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