Welcome to part 3 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed the VCF 9.1 high-level design and lab best practices. In this post, I will discuss the planning and preparation for deploying a VCF 9.1 fleet.

If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:

1: Whats New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

After you have understood the VCF deployment models and the design is ready in your mind, the next step is to get familiar with the VCF Planning and Preparation Workbook. If you have been working on the VCF platform for quite some time, you already understand the importance of this workbook. The workbook is an Excel file that helps you gather the inputs required for deploying a VCF fleet. The v9.1 workbook can be downloaded from here

The VCF Installer is a ruthless validator.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 2 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed the platform capabilities. In this post, I will talk about the VCF 9.1 architecture.

Understanding the architectural building blocks before you provision anything is the difference between a learning environment and a misconfigured platform you’ll rebuild three times.

The Fleet Model

VCF 9.x introduces the concept of a Fleet as the top-level organizational construct. A Fleet is managed by a common instance of VCF Operations and VCF Automation. Within a fleet, you can have one or more VCF instances, each containing one management domain and zero or more workload domains.

For a home lab, your fleet is a single-region, single-instance deployment. But architecting it with fleet semantics in mind—proper naming conventions, network segmentation, and IP allocation strategies—prepares you for realistic multi-instance designs. To learn more about the deployment topologies in VCF 9, see my previous blog here.… Read the rest

VCF 9.1 was released last week and created quite a buzz in the VMware community worldwide. If VCF 9.0 was the architectural reset, 9.1 is the optimization layer — the release where the new constructs introduced in 9.0 get hardened, scaled, and made operationally practical.

Over the coming posts, we’ll build a full VCF 9.1 environment from scratch in a home lab, making deliberate architectural choices at every step and explaining why—not just how. I’ll cover the management domain build, workload domain deployment, NSX design decisions, vSAN ESA configuration, VKS (vSphere Kubernetes Service), VCFA automation, and lifecycle management.

Let’s start with the foundation: what changed in 9.1, what the high-level design looks like, and the practices that distinguish production-grade thinking from home lab shortcuts.

VCF Management Services: A Unified Control Plane Runtime

The headline architectural change in 9.1 is the introduction of VCF Management Services—a common runtime that unifies the platform’s lifecycle and operational capabilities.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 9 of the VCF-9 series. The previous post in this series discussed VPC networking in greater detail. In this post, I will demonstrate how to deploy vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) in an NSX VPC.

If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:

1: VCF-9 Architecture & Deployment Models

2: VCF Installer Walk-through

3: VCF-9 Networking Models

4: NSX Edge Cluster Deployment

5: ESXi Host Commission in VCF

6: Deploying a Workload Domain

7: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

8: VPC Creation with Centralized Networking

9: VPC Networking Deep Dive

VKS, when integrated with NSX VPCs, enables self-service, secure, and automated network and security consumption for Kubernetes clusters within an NSX Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This approach provides users with a simplified, self-service model to manage network segments, security policies, and external connectivity for their applications, all within predefined infrastructure guardrails set by the administrator.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 9 of the VCF-9 series. The previous post in this series discussed how to create Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with centralized network connectivity. In this post, I will dive deep into the fundamentals of VPC networking. 

If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:

1: VCF-9 Architecture & Deployment Models

2: VCF Installer Walk-through

3: VCF-9 Networking Models

4: NSX Edge Cluster Deployment

5: ESXi Host Commission in VCF

6: Deploying a Workload Domain

7: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

8: VPC Creation with Centralized Networking

Part 3 of this series discussed the networking models in VCF-9. In the previous post, I covered the concepts of default transit gateway and VPC gateway, as well as the types of subnets that can be created in a VPC. It is essential to recall these concepts to comprehend VPC networking. … Read the rest

Welcome to part 8 of the VCF-9 series. The previous post in this series discussed how to deploy VCF Operations for Logs and configure log forwarding for vSphere and NSX components.

In this post, I will discuss the creation of Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with centralized network connectivity. 

If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:

1: VCF-9 Architecture & Deployment Models

2: VCF Installer Walk-through

3: VCF-9 Networking Models

4: NSX Edge Cluster Deployment

5: ESXi Host Commission in VCF

6: Deploying a Workload Domain

7: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

The NSX VPC feature is not new and was first introduced in NSX 4.0. NSX VPCs provide multi-tenancy capabilities, as they offer networking and security services to multiple tenants that are completely isolated from one another. Access to networking constructs (T1 gateways, segments, etc.) is controlled via RBAC policies, and limits are enforced by assigning quotas to the objects that can be created inside a tenant. … Read the rest

Welcome to part 7 of the VCF-9 series. The previous post in this series discussed how to configure an online depot in VCF operations and download the product installation binaries. This post will discuss the steps of deploying an instance of VCF Operations for Logs and configuring vSphere and NSX integration for log forwarding.

If you are not following along, I encourage you to read the earlier parts of this series from the links below:

1: VCF-9 Architecture & Deployment Models

2: VCF Installer Walk-through

3: VCF-9 Networking Models

4: NSX Edge Cluster Deployment

5: ESXi Host Commission in VCF

6: Deploying a Workload Domain

7: Depot Configuration and Binary Management in VCF Operations

VCF Operations for Logs, formerly vRealize Log Insight, is a VMware solution for centralized log management and analysis within a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment. It provides deep visibility into operational issues, enabling faster troubleshooting and proactive issue detection.… Read the rest

In older versions of VCF (4.x & 5.x), before you deploy any of the Aria suite components, you have to download the binaries online or download the binaries manually and upload them into VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle, followed by binary mapping. Then, you can leverage these binaries to install, upgrade, or patch products from the Aria suite.

In VCF 9, this functionality has been moved to the unified VCF Operations component. All VCF fleet-related configurations/tasks are now performed through the VCF Operations. Using VCF operations, you can configure an online depot (token-based) or an offline depot for binary management. A depot serves as a source for downloading installation, upgrade, and patch binaries. You must set up a depot before downloading and installing components like VCF Operations for Logs and VCF Operations for Networks.

Only one depot connection can be ACTIVE at a time. If a depot is already ACTIVE, you must disconnect it before switching the depot to Online or Offline.… Read the rest