WilliamLam.com

Bypassing Minimum Storage Pre-Check for vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2 Lab Deployments

by // Leave a Comment

After successfully deploying the vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2 Installer, which I recently built some automation for, the next step is to deploy an SSP Instance. I was surprised to see there was a fairly hefty minimum storage pre-check of a little over 3.5TB, something I certainly hope my lab never gets close to consuming! Since thin provisioning is already used by default, ideally the minimum storage requirement should simply reflect what is needed for the selected form factor.


😅Fortunately, there is a workaround to skip the minimum storage pre-check and allow us to proceed with the SSP Instance deployment.

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

[Read more...]

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

by // Leave a Comment

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! 😎

[Read more...]

Quick Tip - Automating vDefend Security Services Platform (SSP) 5.2.0 Installer & License Hub 2.0 for vDefend & Avi Load Balancer OVA Deployment

by // Leave a Comment

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.


To license vDefend SSP, you also need to deploy the new License Hub 2.0 for VMware vDefend and VMware Avi Load Balancer and I have also created a PowerCLI script called deploy_vdefend_license_hub.ps1