Latest posts
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 9): Day 2 Operations
Part 9 of the 10-part VCF series. This technical reference manual covers automated lifecycle management, certificate rotation, security compliance, and backup strategies for keeping a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x platform operational. Orchestrated Lifecycle Management (LCM) The core operational advantage of VCF 9.x is unified platform patching managed by SDDC Manager. Instead of manually executing…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 8): Workload Domains Explained
Part 8 of the 10-part VCF series. This technical reference manual outlines the structural components, deployment workflows, and core design principles governing Workload Domains within a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x architecture. Workload Domain Core Component Stack A Workload Domain represents a policy-driven pool of compute, storage, and network capacity managed by a dedicated control…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 7): Storage with vSAN ESA and OSA
Part 7 of the 10-part VCF series. This technical reference guide details the storage architectural decisions, core capabilities, and deployment boundaries required when designing storage pools for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x. Core Integration Requirements In VCF 9.x, vSAN is the primary software-defined storage layer, automating the creation of shared datastores, with the Management Domain…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 6): Networking with NSX
Part 6 of the 10-part VCF series. Part 5 covered the physical hardware. Now we move into the software-defined networking layer. NSX is the component that most traditional vSphere admins find unfamiliar, so this part is designed to bridge that gap. Networking Architecture with NSX NSX decouples switching, routing, and security lines from the physical…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 5): Hardware Requirements and the Bill of Materials
This is a comprehensive guide to planning the physical infrastructure and Bill of Materials (BOM) for a compliant, production-ready VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x deployment. Why Hardware Planning Matters More in VCF Unlike traditional vSphere, VCF imposes strict, validated hardware requirements through SDDC Manager. An inaccurate Bill of Materials will cause the VCF Installer to…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 4): Architecture Deep Dive
Part 4 of the 10-part VCF series. Now that the economics and licensing complexities are sorted, we can return to the technology. This article maps out the logical boundaries of VCF 9.x, diving into Management Domains, Workload Domains, and the unified VCF Fleet architecture. The Core Blueprint: Physical to Logical Boundaries In a traditional vSphere…
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VCF 9.1 Is Here: Every New Feature Worth Knowing About
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 went GA on 12 May 2026, roughly eleven months after VCF 9.0 landed. I’ve been working through the release notes and TechDocs since day one and there’s more here than the usual maintenance release. A handful of these features are things the community has been asking for across several release cycles.…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 3): Making Sense of Broadcom Licensing
Part 3 of the 10-part VCF series. Part 2 kept pointing at licensing as the thing everyone actually worries about, so here it is. This is a map of how the model works today, where the costs hide, and how to avoid paying for cores you will never run. It is not a rant about…
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Mastering VCF 9.x (Part 2): Building the Business Case
This is Part 2 of a 10-part series that takes VMware Cloud Foundation from first principles all the way to a working lab build. In Part 1, we tackled what VCF actually is under the hood. Now, we dive into the harder question: Why would an organisation take it on in the first place, what…
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Demystifying VCF 9.x: The New Architecture of the VMware Stack
This is Part 1 of a 10-part series that takes VMware Cloud Foundation from first principles all the way to a working lab build. If you have landed here cold, start at the top. Everything after this assumes the groundwork we cover below. The Short Answer VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is Broadcom’s flagship private cloud…