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Automated Lab Deployment Script updated to support VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1

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I finally got some time to update my Automated VMware Cloud Foundation Lab (VCF) Deployment script to support the latest VCF 5.1 release as this has been requested by a number of folks both internally and externally.

In addition to updating some of the new resource requirements such as increasing the Nested ESXi vSAN capacity drive from 60GB to 100GB, I was also thinking about some of the feedback that I had received internally from one of our engineers and that gave me some ideas on how to further stream the deployment using automation. I also came up with a few new ideas that I have added to the script, some of which I will cover in a future blog post 😁


The first thing you will notice is that you can now specify the number of ESXi hosts to deploy both for the VCF Management Domain as well as for a Workload Domain.

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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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Preserving VM snapshot hierarchy across vCenter Servers

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On occasion, you might find yourself needing to take multi-level VM snapshots for various testing or development purposes, not an uncommon task for IT administrators.

In the past, if you needed to move the VM and preserve its snapshot hierarchy, it was usually difficult and involved manual tasks to unregister the VM and copying its files to the destination environment.


At VMware Explore last year, I had a customer who shared a nice tidbit regarding this topic with me that I was recently reminded of. By performing a Cross vCenter vMotion (not clone), the VM snapshot hierarchy is automatically preserved.

You of course can use the vSphere API and PowerCLI to initiate a Cross vCenter vMotion OR you can easily perform this operation by using the Advanced Cross vCenter vMotion capability that is built right into the vSphere UI, which can also be useful if you need to quickly cold migrate some workloads from older vSphere releases.

After authenticating into my source vCenter Server which is running vSphere 7.0 Update 3o, I simply select my VM with snapshots and perform a migration (not clone) and in a few minutes, it is now running in my vSphere 8.0 Update 2 destination vCenter Server!