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VCF 9.1.1 - Simplified vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) using VLAN-Backed VPCs without NSX Tunnel Endpoints (TEPs)

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As part of the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1.1 release, consuming NSX Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) has gotten simpler, especially for environments using traditional VLAN-backed networks. In VCF 9.1.0, users already had the ability to configure a VPC using a Distributed Transit Gateway (DTGW) and Distributed VLAN through the NSX Virtual Network Appliance (VNA), but this still required configuring NSX Tunnel Endpoints (TEPs) on each ESX host.

With VCF 9.1.1, the networking workflow has been further simplified with a new VLAN-backed VPC option. While it still uses DTGW and VNA, TEPs are no longer required, removing additional network requirements such as a larger MTU. As a result, environments that previously could not meet the networking requirements to configure a VPC can now deploy and consume services such as vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and VCF Automation (VCFA).

It is also important to understand the different VPC consumption options and their constraints. The following table summarizes the capabilities and limitations of each option.


Note: DTGW with TEP was possible with VCF 9.0.0 but there was no support for VCFA until VCF 9.1.0.

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Quick Tip: How to Identify Which Kubernetes Cluster Owns a vSphere Container Volume (PV)

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I was recently cleaning up some orphaned vSphere Container Volumes and while I was able to compare the Persistent Volumes (PV) IDs against the ones currently in use by a couple of Kubernetes clusters, I wanted to be 100% sure before removing them, especially since I planned bulk delete using PowerCLI’s Remove-CnsVolume cmdlet.

You can view all provisioned vSphere Container Volumes in the vSphere UI by navigating to vSphere Cluster->Monitor->Cloud Native Storage->Container Volumes. In addition to the volume details, you also get access to all of the associated metadata and labels, very similar to what you would see using kubectl, which is quite nice!


While reviewing the PV IDs in the UI, I noticed an attribute named Kubernetes Cluster, which appeared to identify the Kubernetes (K8s) cluster that owned the volume. How do I find this Kubernetes Cluster ID?

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VCF 9.1 - OCuLink External Graphics (eGPU) Passthrough with vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)

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The Minisforum MS-A2 continues to be a popular and versatile platform for running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 in a lab environment. While the MS-A2 may be small in size, it is surprisingly capable and can even be configured to support an NVIDIA RTX 4000 Ada (20GB VRAM) GPU, which I had used to deploy VMware Private AI Services (PAIS).

Although there are several half-height GPUs that can fit in an MS-A2, the overall selection remains relatively limited. For users looking for additional GPU flexibility, the MS-A2 supports an OCuLink half-height PCIe card, enabling the use of a much broader range of discrete GPUs.


Thanks to a fellow colleague who recently shared their success with me using this setup on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1, including GPU passthrough to vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) cluster for AI experimentation, below are the specific BOM details for those interested.

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