WilliamLam.com

Major Enhancements to VCF 9.1 Upgrade Planner Tool

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The VCF Upgrade Planner was launched back in May and the reception and feedback from our users has been incredible. With over 90,000 visits in just a few months, it has quickly become an essential resource for helping customers and partners create a custom-tailored runbook for their specific environment to successfully upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1.

As if the number of visits was not enough validation, I really felt the impact firsthand at VMware Explore 2026, where I met several attendees who all shared a similar sentiment:

I would not have been able to upgrade to VCF 9.1 without the VCF Upgrade Planner.

It has been great to hear how valuable the VCF Upgrade Planner has become for our users. Based on that feedback, we have made over 100 updates, from fixes to enhancements, and today I am excited to share several major updates that further improve the user experience and introduce new capabilities that will help with your VCF 9.1 journey.

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VCF 9.1.1 - Single ESX Host for VCF Fleet, VCF Workload Domain or VCF Cluster

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For a production deployment of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), there is a good reason why you might not want to run everything on a single ESX host. 😅

Assuming you understand how the minimum ESX host requirements are derived for VCF deployments, there are certainly benefits to deploying a resource-optimized VCF environment for lab or proof-of-concept (POC) purposes. Being able to exercise workflows such as creating a new VCF Workload Domain or adding a new VCF Cluster with just a single ESX host can be extremely useful.

In fact, this has been possible since VCF 5.x and is something I have personally used to quickly stand up a full VCF environment or expand an existing one, which I have documented over the past few years:

While the scenarios above are the most common use cases for a single ESX host, deploying a new VCF Cluster with just one host has been a less common request, but it has also been possible.

To be able to deploy a new VCF Fleet, Workload Domain or Cluster using just a single ESX host requires applying a workaround, which I have captured in my comprehensive VCF 9.1.x Installer and SDDC Manager Configuration Workaround for Lab Deployments blog post.

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Bypassing Minimum Unique Flows & Metric Collection Period for vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2 Lab Deployments

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After successfully deploying vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2 in my VCF 9.1.1 environment, I came to learn that SSP requires at least 1,000 unique flows before it can generate a security assessment of your environment.


Similarly, SSP also requires a minimum of three days of collected flow data before it can generate a flow capacity assessment.


If you have a small lab environment like myself, generating 1,000 unique flows can be difficult, and having to wait several days to demonstrate certain SSP capabilities may not be ideal, especially for proof-of-concept deployments. Here is how you can work around these default requirements when deploying SSP in a lab environment.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by Broadcom, please use only in a non-production environment for lab and learning purposes.

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