Category: VCF
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VCF 9 Login Accounts: Which User ID for Which Component, and What For
One of the most common sources of confusion in VMware Cloud Foundation is simply: which user ID do I log in with, and to what? Is it vcf, root, admin, or administrator@vsphere.local? Every VCF 9 component ships its own built-in accounts, each meant for a different job — UI, API, SSH/OS, or a service account VCF…
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VCF 9 Interactive Walkthroughs
A set of interactive, click-through walkthroughs for deploying, upgrading and operating VMware Cloud Foundation 9 and its components. Pick one below — each opens a full-screen, step-by-step navigator you can follow on a second screen, with a Full plan / print export. VCF 9 Deployment WalkthroughGreenfield bring-up of the management domain via the VCF Installer…
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Networking for VMware Private AI Workloads: Segmentation, Ingress and the East-West Path (Private AI Series, Part 26)
Model serving lives or dies on the network nobody designed. Here is how to segment AI namespaces with NSX, expose inference endpoints through the Gateway API and the load balancer, and keep RAG east-west traffic fast and private.
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VMware Private AI Foundation Upgrade: Moving from VCF 9.0 to 9.1 Without Breaking Your GPUs (Private AI Series, Part 24)
A practical 9.0 to 9.1 upgrade runbook for VMware Private AI Foundation, plus a closing verdict on the platform after 24 parts. The order of operations, the vGPU driver branch trap, and host-by-host GPU domain remediation.
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Is VMware Private AI Actually Private? A Security and Data Privacy Reality Check (Private AI Series, Part 20)
On-prem Private AI keeps your data in the building, but the breach risk is inside the cluster. How vDefend microsegmentation, confidential computing and RBAC in VCF 9.1 actually secure a Private AI pipeline.
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Air-Gapped VMware Private AI Foundation: Mirroring, AMT and the Bootstrap Problem (Private AI Series, Part 19)
Deploying VMware Private AI Foundation in a fully disconnected enclave: what to mirror, how the artifact mirroring tool (AMT) fits, the Harbor bootstrap problem, and how to validate offline NIM and GPU before handover.
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VMware Private AI Sizing and Cost: GPU Memory Math, Capacity Planning and TCO (Private AI Series, Part 18)
How to size a VMware Private AI platform from the workload up: GPU memory math, the KV cache trap, a model-to-card matrix, and the four-layer cost model that actually decides the business case.
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GPU Monitoring with VCF Operations for VMware Private AI: The Signals That Actually Catch a Failing Workload (Private AI Series, Part 17)
VCF Operations gives you GPU dashboards out of the box, but the metric most teams trust is the one that lies. Here is what to watch on a Private AI Foundation estate, why GPU utilization misleads, and the hardware-health signals the default dashboards never surface.
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Installing the NVIDIA GPU Operator and vGPU Drivers for VMware Private AI Foundation (Private AI Series, Part 9)
A practical runbook for installing the NVIDIA GPU Operator and matching vGPU host and guest drivers on VMware Private AI Foundation, with the validation checks and version-skew traps that decide whether GPUs actually schedule.
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Prepare a GPU Workload Domain for VMware Private AI Foundation (Private AI Series, Part 8)
A field-tested, bottom-up procedure for standing up a GPU-accelerated workload domain on VCF 9.0 for Private AI Foundation: firmware, the vLCM vGPU driver, Shared Direct, a single-zone Supervisor, and the mistakes that actually bite.
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VMware Private AI Reference Architecture and Sizing: A Practical Blueprint (Private AI Series, Part 7)
How to size a VMware Private AI Foundation build the right way: two-domain design, choosing the deployment model, and working from workload back to GPU hosts and BOM on VCF 9.1.
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GPU Partitioning for VMware Private AI: Choosing Between vGPU, MIG and Passthrough (Private AI Series, Part 6)
Time-sliced vGPU, MIG-backed vGPU, GPU passthrough and the new ESXi 9 Update 1 hybrid mode each fit different Private AI workloads. Here is how to design the split, with a capability matrix and a reference topology.
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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