Category: VCF & Infra Series
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NSX 9 Tier-1 Gateways and East-West Routing: DR, SR and the Hairpin Trap (NSX Series, Part 10)
The Tier-1 is half distributed router, half service router, and knowing the difference decides whether east-west traffic stays local or hairpins to the Edge.
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NSX 9 Tier-0 Gateways and North-South Routing: BGP, ECMP and VRF (NSX Series, Part 9)
The Tier-0 is where NSX peers with your physical fabric. BGP design, ECMP and the URPF trap, route redistribution, and VRF-Lite for multi-tenant routing.
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NSX 9 Host Transport Node Prep: VDS, EDP and Verifying It Worked (NSX Series, Part 6)
Preparing an ESXi host as an NSX 9 transport node: what it installs, how the Transport Node Profile applies VDS and EDP across the cluster, and how to verify it.
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NSX 9 Manager Deployment and Cluster Bring-Up in VCF 9 (NSX Series, Part 5)
In VCF 9 you do not install NSX Manager, VCF does. Here is what the workflow deploys, the prerequisites that decide success, shared vs dedicated, and how to verify.
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NSX 9 Design and Planning: Transport Zones, MTU, TEP Pools and EDP (NSX Series, Part 4)
The NSX 9 design decisions that decide whether your overlay works: the single overlay transport zone, GENEVE MTU, TEP IP pools and VLANs, and EDP mode.
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NSX 9 Licensing and Editions: VCF vs Standalone and the vDefend Trap (NSX Series, Part 3)
How NSX 9 is licensed in VCF 9: what the base bundle includes, why security needs a vDefend add-on at full core count, and when standalone NSX makes sense.
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NSX 9 Architecture: Management, Control and Data Planes (NSX Series, Part 2)
How NSX 9 splits into management, control and data planes, what the converged NSX Manager cluster does, the CLI to check it, how to size it, and what breaks when each plane fails.
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VKS Day-2 Operations: Backup, Multi-Tenancy and Capacity (VKS Series, Part 16)
Day-2 is where a VKS platform quietly succeeds or rots. Here is the hard line between infrastructure and app backup, the multi-tenancy spectrum, and the capacity math that bites late.
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VKS: The Verdict and When to Use It vs Alternatives (VKS Series, Part 17)
VKS is not trying to be OpenShift, and judging it that way gets the decision wrong. Here is an honest verdict versus the alternatives, and where VKS genuinely earns its place.
Architect’s Toolkit
PJ’s Tools
VMware Cloud Foundation
- VCF Documentation
- VCF 9 Planning & Preparation Workbook
- VCF Bill of Materials (BoM)
- VMware Compatibility Guide
- VMware Interoperability Matrix
- VMware Configuration Maximums
- VMware Ports & Protocols
- VMware Hands-on Labs
- RVTools Download
Nutanix
AI & Cloud-Native Platform
- NVIDIA Build (Model Catalog)
- NVIDIA AI Enterprise Reference Architecture
- NVIDIA NIM Performance Benchmarking
- NVIDIA NGC Catalog
- NeMo Microservices Helm Chart
- Helm Charts Repository
- Hugging Face Models
Architecture & Design
About the Author
Dr Pranay Jha
Dr. Pranay Jha is a Cloud and AI Consultant with 18+ years of experience in hybrid cloud, virtualization, and enterprise infrastructure transformation. He specializes in VMware technologies, multi-cloud strategy, and Generative AI solutions. He holds a PhD in Computer Applications with research focused on Cloud and AI, has published multiple research papers, and has been a VMware vExpert since 2016 and a VMUG Community Leader.
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