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How to distinguish between classic vSphere VMs vs vSphere Supervisor Pod VMs? 

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Not all vSphere-based VMs are the same! This is especially true with the introduction of vSphere Supervisor (formally known as vSphere IaaS or vSphere with Tanzu or Project Pacific) which includes a modern way of provisioning a traditional/classic VM but also a new VM-based form factor known as vSphere Pod VMs.


There was a recent question internally about how you could you distinguish between traditional/classic VMs built from vSphere UI or API versus the vSphere Pod VMs using PowerCLI and specifically using the default Get-VM cmdlet?

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Quickly deploying vSphere IaaS (formerly vSphere with Tanzu) Control Plane Services via YAMLs

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I recently deployed the Local Consumption Interface (LCI) which is a new vSphere IaaS (formerly vSphere with Tanzu) Control Plane Service that was just introduced with the release of vSphere 8.0 Update 3 into my homelab.

While going through the manual vSphere UI deployment, I noticed there were only handful of vSphere IaaS services that are shipped out of the box including the VM Service (VM Operator), Velero vSphere Operator and Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG) Service.


The workflow to register a new vSphere IaaS service is not difficult, but it does take multiple steps from downloading the deployment YAML file, uploading the file to vCenter Server and then confirm the deployment before the deployment of the service begins and this would have to be done for each vSphere IaaS service you wish to deploy!

There has to be a better and more streamline way, especially for those that do not like to click to many times in the UI ?

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Decoding vSphere (vCenter/ESXi), vSAN & Tanzu License Keys

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For most users, you probably have a large collection of vSphere license keys that have been provisioned over the years and keeping track of the product SKU, entitled features and capacity can be a challenge, especially if you are just looking at the raw 25 character license string.

While the Broadcom Support Portal (BSP) is recommended for all license management operations(view, split, merge, etc), did you know you could also use vCenter Server to help decode a particular license key?

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