Category: VCF
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VCF 9 Hardware: The Compatibility Traps That Stall Bring-Up (VCF 9 Series, Part 29)
A field guide to the five hardware traps that stall VCF 9 bring-up: non-certified NVMe, a stale vSAN HCL, sub-25GbE NICs, SD/USB boot media, and under-spec hosts.
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Stretched Cluster vs Site Recovery in VCF 9: Choosing Your DR Architecture (VCF 9 Series, Part 28)
A vSAN stretched cluster is not a disaster recovery plan. Here is how stretched clustering and Site Recovery differ in VCF 9, what changed in the tooling, and when to use each (or both).
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VCF 9 Zero Trust Security Architecture: Identity, Segmentation and Platform Integrity (VCF 9 Series, Part 27)
Zero trust on VCF 9 is an architecture, not a checkbox. Here are the four enforcement planes, how they map to real VCF components, and the design calls that actually matter.
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How to Deploy VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA on VCF 9 (VCF 9 Series, Part 26)
A field-tested runbook for deploying VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA on VCF 9: the two deployment paths, the three licenses you need, GPU host prep, the right sharing mode, and the guided workflow, plus the gotchas that stall bring-up.
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VCF Automation in VCF 9 Explained: Provider, Organizations and Self-Service Cloud (VCF 9 Series, Part 25)
VCF Automation is not just Aria Automation with a new badge. Here is how the provider model, organizations, projects and built-in cloud services work in VCF 9, and the All Apps vs VM Apps decision you need to get right.
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vSphere Supervisor and VKS Architecture in VCF 9: The Reference Design (VCF 9 Series, Part 24)
How vSphere Supervisor and VKS fit together in VCF 9, from the control plane and vSphere Zones to networking, storage, and the design defaults you should override before you commit.
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How to Upgrade VMware Cloud Foundation to 9.1: The Full-Stack Runbook (VCF 9 Series, Part 23)
VCF Operations now drives lifecycle, so the 9.1 upgrade starts there, not at SDDC Manager. Here is the full-stack sequence, the new Management Services CIDR and License Appliance prep, and the three failures that bite.
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VCF 9 Certificate, Identity and Backup Failures and How to Fix Them (VCF 9 Series, Part 22)
Certificates, identity and backup all moved in VCF 9. Here are the failures that actually bite in production, with the symptom, the real cause and the fix for each.
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VCF 9 Fleet Lifecycle Management: The Reference Architecture (VCF 9 Series, Part 21)
SDDC Manager is gone. Here is how VCF 9 fleet lifecycle management actually works: the VCF Operations control plane, the software depot, the upgrade sequence, and the design gotchas that catch teams on their first cycle.
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VCF 9 Operations Capacity and Cost Management: A Practical Runbook (VCF 9 Series, Part 20)
A hands-on runbook for capacity planning, rightsizing, reclamation and cost reporting in VCF 9 Operations, including the model and policy choices that decide whether the recommendations are worth trusting.
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VCF Operations in VCF 9: Monitoring and Observability Explained (VCF 9 Series, Part 19)
A field guide to VCF Operations in VCF 9: what replaced the Aria suite, the architecture you actually deploy, and the observability gotchas that bite during the move.
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VCF 9 Cutover and Decommission: The Teardown Failures That Actually Bite (VCF 9 Series, Part 18)
Cutting over to VCF 9 and tearing down the old environment? Here are the decommission failures that bite at workload domain delete, host removal, NSX edge and vSAN evacuation, and how to recover.
Architect’s Toolkit
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
- AI Infra Sizing & Cost Calculator
- 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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