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VCF 9.1.1 - Deploying Your Own AI Models with VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) 3.0

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My recent blog post on the new AI Assistant for VCF in VCF Operations 9.1.1 received a lot of positive feedback from both internal and external readers, especially from those who were not aware that this capability was available and were excited to try it out. The excitement is understandable, as this opens up many interesting possibilities for infrastructure administrators to operate and manage their environments more efficiently.

In that article, I focused on how to enable AI Assistant for VCF and quickly get started using Google Gemini as a cloud-based LLM provider. While that is certainly the fastest way to start exploring the capability, AI Assistant for VCF also supports local AI models deployed using VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) 3.0, enabling customers to take advantage of powerful AI models running securely and more cost-effectively within their own on-premises environment.

In this blog post, we will now focus on deploying and consuming local AI models with PAIS. This builds on another recent article where I walked through the setup of VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) using the Artifact Mirroring Tool (AMT) for air-gapped environments. 

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10 Exciting Enhancements in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.1

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This has been an exciting week as VMware Explore 2026 takes place in Las Vegas, where I have been meeting with customers and partners while delivering several technical breakout sessions and workshops. To coincide with the event, we have also announced the general availability of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1.1, the first maintenance release for VCF 9.1! 🥳

Note: While there is no defined patch sequence for maintenance and EPs, there is a special exception that you should be aware specifically for VCF 9.1.1 release which will have a couple of specific sequence that must be followed (pre-checks already built into the release). These exceptions will be removed in a future maintenance release, but just something to be aware of

  • Fleet LCM must be patched to 9.1.1 before updating other VCF components to 9.1.1
  • VCFMS must be updated to 9.1.1 before updating Identity broker, Salt Master/RaaS component to 9.1.1
  • VCF Automation (VCFA) must be updated to 9.1.1 before updating VCD Migrator component to 9.1.1

As a maintenance release, it includes all cumulative bug fixes and security updates from previous Express Patches (EPs), along with platform stability improvements and enhancements that simplify the journey to VCF 9.1.

While there are many improvements in this release, here are ten that I think are worth highlighting.

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Quick Tip: Reducing High CPU Utilization in VCF Automation (VCFA) on AMD Zen4/Zen5 CPUs

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A couple of weeks ago, I received an interesting email from a reader who had observed high CPU utilization after upgrading VCF Automation (VCFA) to the latest VCF 9.1 release. They were running VCF 9.1 on the popular Minisforum MS-A2 platform, which uses AMD Zen4/Zen5 (Ryzen) consumer processors which are not supported on the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG). As I have covered previously (here and here), these processors have been known to exhibit slower entropy generation that can lead to higher than expected CPU utilization without the appropriate optimizations.

With the help of Claude to analyze the issue, the reader arrived at the following conclusion:

Five JVM-based services were dying repeatedly during startup because FIPS_MODE=strict was slowing down TLS handshakes (both database and internal service-to-service HTTPS) enough to occasionally exceed connection timeouts. Every restart meant a full JVM boot: Spring context initialization, Liquibase migrations, Hibernate, index rebuilding, which is expensive. The crash loop itself became the CPU load. Setting FIPS_MODE=disabled on the affected deployments stopped the crash loop entirely, and CPU usage returned to near-idle.

Interestingly, around the same time, I also heard from an internal colleague who had independently observed that disabling FIPS for specific VCFA services significantly reduced CPU utilization. Since FIPS is enabled by default for VCF 9.1 deployments, and there are known performance implications with FIPS and OpenSSL 3.x, these effects can be amplified on AMD Zen4/Zen5 (Ryzen) consumer processors due to their slower entropy generation, resulting in higher than expected CPU utilization.

Fortunately, both individuals had identified workarounds for the issue, but their recommendations did not completely overlap. Before sharing the guidance more broadly, I wanted to spend some time validating the solution to identify the minimal set of changes required to consistently achieve the same outcome.

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