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vSAN ESA HCL hardware mock VIB for Nested ESXi

01.23.2025 by William Lam // 1 Comment

Whether you are configuring vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) directly from vCenter Server or from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), the underlying ESXi hardware is automatically validated against the vSAN ESA Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) to ensure that you are using supported vSAN hardware.

In the case of vCenter Server, you can simply ignore the HCL warnings and accept the risks and proceed with the configuration but when using VCF, the operation is blocked to ensure customers have a good experience when selecting vSAN ESA when deploying a VCF Management or Workload  Domain.


With that said, there is workaround where you can create your own custom vSAN ESA HCL JSON based on the hardware that you have and then upload that to either Cloud Builder for setting up a new VCF Management Domain or to SDDC Manager for deploying a new VCF Workload Domain, which I have blogged about HERE and HERE.

The use of Nested ESXi is a very popular way to deploy VCF, especially if you are new to solution and allows you to easily experiment and learn. More recently, I have noticed an uptick in the interests for deploying VCF with vSAN ESA and while you can certainly generate a custom vSAN ESA HCL as mentioned earlier, the process still requires some effort and in some situations the vSAN ESA HCL could get overwritten leading some frustration in debugging.

After helping some folks debug their VCF environments recently, I was thinking about a better experience and leveraging another technique that may not be very well known externally ...

UPDATE (02/03/25) - This solution can also be used for a physical ESXi deployment for use with vSAN ESA and VCF.

[Read more...]

Categories // Automation, Nested Virtualization, VMware Cloud Foundation, VSAN Tags // Nested ESXi, VMware Cloud Foundation, vSAN ESA

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Homelab Hardware Options

12.05.2024 by William Lam // 7 Comments

I have been getting a ton of inquiries lately, both internally as well as externally for hardware recommendations for building a new or updating an existing homelab/test environment to be able to deploy the full VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) solution. I typically receive at least half a dozen inquiries per week about general VMware Homelabs, but it has increased in volume lately, perhaps it was due to the recent US Black Friday and Cyber Monday Sales or perhaps some are preparing for VCF 9 already?

In any case, I normally point users to my crowdsourced VMware Community Homelab Project, where users can submit their hardware build-of-materials (BOM), overall cost and the VMware solutions they are currently using.


While the VMware Community Homelab Project has been running for several years now and has helped numerous users, the majority of the submissions typically focus on subset of the VMware portfolio and only handful of submissions have included VCF and more importantly, some of the submissions are several years old.

Internally, a number of folks have shared more recent BOMs for building an environment to run the latest VCF 5.x release and I have also found several folks outside of VMware doing the same, so I thought it would be useful and timely to aggregate some of their hardware configurations to help give users an idea of what works and options as they are looking to revamp their lab going into 2025.

[Read more...]

Categories // Home Lab, VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // VCF, VMware Cloud Foundation

First Look at VMware Cloud Foundation 9

09.03.2024 by William Lam // 5 Comments

The big news from last week at VMware Explore Las Vegas was the announcement of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9!

For those that attended the VCF Division Keynote 3 Transformations for the Smarter Way to Cloud, you got to hear more about VCF 9 directly from both Krish Prasad (General Manager of VCF Division) and Anu Kirpekar (Head of VCF Platform Engineering).


In addition, I also had the privilege of sharing with the audience several brand new VCF 9 demos showcasing the evolution of the VCF platform from a new simplified VCF Installer to the unified and integrated Operations and Automation experience to better support our end users whether that is for the infrastructure and operations team to the platform engineering and consumer teams.


If you were not able to attend the session or you were not at VMware Explore, you can watch the recording at https://www.vmware.com/explore/video-library/video/6360759075112, which is completely free and does not even require a login!

For a complete list of all the VMware Explore Las Vegas on-demand sessions, be sure to check out my summary repo HERE. For those interested, below are my other breakouts that are also now available to watch on-demand:

  • CODEB1574LV - Tech Deep Dive: Automating VMware ESXi Installation at Scale
  • VCFP1362LV - Building a Modern Private Cloud using the Cloud Maturity Model Framework
  • CODEP1801LV - Adventures in VMware Home Labs by Virtually Speaking Podcast

Categories // VMware Cloud Foundation, VMworld Tags // VMware Cloud Foundation, vmworld

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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  • Programmatically accessing the Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG) 05/06/2025
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