vSAN ESA (Express Storage Architecture) has become the preferred architecture when deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). For those interested in exploring vSAN ESA with VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 but may not have compatible hardware from the vSAN ESA HCL, there are a couple of workarounds that you might want to be aware of.
UPDATE (09/29/25) - As of VCF 9.0.1, you no longer need to deploy the vSAN ESA Hardware Mock VIB, please see this blog post for more details which will allow you to easily bypass this check directly within the VCF Installer.
Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by Broadcom, please use at your own risk. For production deployments, you should be using supported vSAN ESA Hardware which you can refer to Broadcom Compatibility Guide (BCG)
There are potentially two scenarios you may come across when using vSAN ESA to deploy your initial and/or extending your VCF Fleet.