Licensing has quietly become one of the more consequential architectural changes in the VCF 9.0 ecosystem. First, VCF 9.0 adopted subscription-based licensing, and now, in VCF 9.1, this change has been pushed for Avi and vDefend. What used to be a 25-character key pasted into NSX Manager is now managed through a dedicated, centralized service: License Hub. With the release of License Hub 2.0, Broadcom has taken that model further by decoupling it from the Security Services Platform (SSP) installer, shrinking its footprint, and adding the operational tooling (APIs, backup/restore, NFR support) that a standalone licensing control plane needs to run at scale.

This post walks through what License Hub is, what changed in 2.0, why it matters for anyone running vDefend 9.1 or Avi 32.1.1, and what to plan for if you’re upgrading.

What License Hub Actually Does?

License Hub for VMware vDefend and Avi Load Balancer provides centralized license management and reporting for VMware vDefend and VMware Avi subscription license files.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 15 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed implementing Distributed Transit Gateway (DTGW) and demonstrated how NSX VPCs used DTGW for network connectivity. This post will dive deep into inspecting the ingress and egress packet flow.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

7: Deploy Workload Domain

8: Enable Avi on Workload Domain

9: Deploy Supervisor in Workload Domain

10: Deploy VCF Automation

11: VCFA Provider Management Configuration

12: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

13: VNA Cluster for Distributed Connectivity

14: Distributed Transit Gateway for VPCs

Before diving into the lab, let’s do a quick recap of DTGW and the VNA cluster.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 14 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed the architecture and deployment of a VNA cluster for distributed connectivity. This post will discuss implementing the distributed transit gateway for VPC connectivity.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

7: Deploy Workload Domain

8: Enable Avi on Workload Domain

9: Deploy Supervisor in Workload Domain

10: Deploy VCF Automation

11: VCFA Provider Management Configuration

12: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

13: VNA Cluster for Distributed Connectivity

Within a VPC, routing between subnets is handled by a VPC Gateway, which behaves like a distributed tier-1.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 13 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed deploying and configuring VCF Logs. This post will discuss VNA clusters in detail, including the deployment.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

7: Deploy Workload Domain

8: Enable Avi on Workload Domain

9: Deploy Supervisor in Workload Domain

10: Deploy VCF Automation

11: VCFA Provider Management Configuration

12: Deploy VCF Operations for Logs

VCF 9.0 introduced a public-cloud-style consumption model for networking: instead of designing tier-0/tier-1 gateways by hand, tenants and application teams get Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with self-service subnets, routing, and security.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 12 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed configuring provider management in VCFA. This post will demonstrate deploying and configuring VCF Operations for logs.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

7: Deploy Workload Domain

8: Enable Avi on Workload Domain

9: Deploy Supervisor in Workload Domain

10: Deploy VCF Automation

11: VCFA Provider Management Configuration

In VCF 9.1, log management has been further unified into VCF Operations. Rather than deploying it as a standalone appliance (VCF 9.0 and earlier), it now runs as a service on the VCF Services Runtime Cluster—the same Kubernetes-based platform that also hosts Fleet Management and other management components.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 9 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed deploying the Avi load balancer in the workload domain. In this post, I will demonstrate deploying the supervisor in a workload domain.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

7: Deploy Workload Domain

8: Enable Avi on Workload Domain

While creating a new workload domain, you will observe that the toggle button for enabling supervisor post domain deployment is activated. You can turn off the toggle if you wish. I did the same, as I wanted to cover this topic in a separate post and discuss the networking stack on which a supervisor can be deployed.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 7 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed setting up network connectivity in the management domain. In this post, I will demonstrate deploying a new workload domain.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

6: Configure Management Domain Network Connectivity

A typical VCF deployment includes a management domain and one or more VI workload domains. Each VI workload domain can be configured with specific resources, network configurations, and policies to support its intended workloads. The VI workload domains are isolated from the management domain and used for hosting business applications and providing a public cloud-like experience within a VCF private cloud.… Read the rest

Welcome to part 6 of the VCF-9.1 home lab series. The previous post in this series discussed the bringup process of the management domain. In this post, I will demonstrate setting up network connectivity in the management domain.

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

1: What’s New in VCF 9.1

2: VCF 9.1 High-Level Design

3: VCF 9.1 Pre-Deployment Planning

4: Setting up VCF 9.1 Offline Depot

5: VCF 9.1 Deploy Management Domain

Why Deploy an Edge Cluster in the Management Domain Even If You Run Nothing There?

The Management Domain Edge Cluster in VCF 9.1 is the network spine of the entire software-defined fabric — it carries transit, external, and inter-VPC traffic even though no workload VMs run on it. Think of it less as a compute resource and more as a dedicated routing/NAT appliance for the whole VCF environment.… Read the rest