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VCF 9.1 - Comprehensive ESX 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 ESX 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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VCF 9.1 - New HTTP Offline Depot Support for VCF Installer & Fleet Depot Service

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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 introduced the concept of a unified VCF Software Depot, which can connect to either Broadcom’s online repository or an offline depot that is hosted within an organizations environment.

By default, an offline VCF Software Depot requires HTTPS with basic authentication. In VCF 9.0, HTTPS can be disabled using this workaround, which remains applicable in VCF 9.1, however, basic authentication is still required.

Note: If you do not or can not  setup a basic web server for your VCF Offline Depot, you can use this simple Python script to serve up depot locally from your desktop as long as its accessible by VCF Installer and/or VCF Fleet Depot Service.

With VCF 9.1, both the VCF Installer and the new VCF Fleet Depot Service support an offline Software Depot configured with HTTP and no basic authentication. To take advantage of this capability, you must use the VCF Installer API for the initial VCF Fleet deployment, which automatically applies the same configuration to the Fleet Depot Service.

Note: The VCF 9.1 Installer UI currently does not support connecting to an offline VCF Software Depot using HTTP, the VCF Installer API must be used to apply this configuration.

If you accidentally used the VCF 9.0 workaround, you will need to reapply the HTTP configuration after the VCF Fleet has been deployed using the new VCF Fleet Depot Service API.

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VCF Installer Deploying VVF Components with VCF Entitlements

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Despite its name, the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Installer can deploy both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) environments. Many users incorrectly believe the VCF Installer restricts you to only the specific product deployments that you have entitlements for, VVF deployment for VVF entitlements and VCF deployments for VCF entitlements.


The VCF Installer does NOT care nor has any knowledge of your license entitlements when performing a deployment. In fact, both VVF and VCF deployments will default to the 90 day evaluation period until the components are licensed by VCF Operations, which is performed by a user post-deployment to retrieve product entitlements.

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