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VCF 9.1.1 - Connecting Pi Coding Agent to VCF Private AI Services (PAIS)

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If you have used Claude Code, Cursor, or OpenAI Codex, you have already experienced Agentic AI, whether it is coding an application, creating a quick script, or debugging an issue. The use cases are infinite, and like many, you can easily burn through your token quota when using the latest state-of-the-art Frontier AI models, which are simply amazing!

While spending some time playing with our latest VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) release (here and here), I have also been trading notes with colleagues doing something similar but rolling their own local AI stack using just vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) running on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1.1. Through those conversations, I came to learn about Pi, not the number, but a lightweight coding agent and agent harness that can connect to a number of AI model providers, including those providing an OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

Since VCF PAIS provides an OpenAI-compatible endpoint that can serve one or more AI models, you can now have your own Agentic AI using Pi running within your on-premises environment using various open weight models! 😎

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Quick Tip - Automating vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2.0 Installer OVA Deployment

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Given the current security threats from Frontier AI, vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) was top of mind for many attendees at the recent VMware Explore 2026. Since it had been some time since I last deployed an earlier version of SSP, I wanted to get some hands-on time with the latest release, which of course also meant writing, or rather prompting AI to write, some deployment automation. 😄

vDefend SSP 5.2 is currently the latest release, and I created a PowerCLI script called deploy_vdefend_security_services_platform.ps1 that makes it super easy to automate the deployment of the SSP Installer OVA. To use the script, simply update the variables with the values for your environment and run the script to perform the deployment.

VCF 9.1.1 - Using VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) Models with AI Assistant for VCF

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For those following along, earlier this week I demonstrated how to configure the new AI Assistant for VCF in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1.1 using Google Gemini as a cloud-based LLM provider, which is a quick way to get started and explore the new capability.

Alongside VCF 9.1.1, we also released VCF Private AI Services (PAIS) 3.0, which enables users to deploy and run their own AI models locally within VCF. In my follow-up articles, I walked through setting up PAIS for an air-gapped environment and then deploying an AI model downloaded from Hugging Face, which PAIS serves through an OpenAI-compatible model endpoint.

In this final blog post, we will bring everything together by connecting AI Assistant for VCF to our PAIS Model Endpoint, allowing the AI Assistant to use an AI model running locally within our VCF environment.

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