Category: VMware & Cloud
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Avi Load Balancer vs NSX Native Load Balancing in VCF 9: Which to Choose (VCF 9 Series, Part 11)
In VCF 9 the NSX native load balancer is deprecated and Avi is the strategic choice. A clear feature, architecture, licensing and migration comparison, with a definite verdict.
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NSX in VCF 9 Explained: Transit Gateways, VPCs and the Distributed Firewall (VCF 9 Series, Part 10)
NSX in VCF 9 keeps Tier-0 and Tier-1 but puts a cloud-style VPC model in front: NSX projects, one Transit Gateway each, distributed routing with no Edge VMs, and the DFW.
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Deploy a VI Workload Domain in VCF 9 with VCF Operations (VCF 9 Series, Part 9)
Deploy a VI workload domain in VCF 9 from the VCF Operations console: commission hosts, choose storage and NSX, and the default-on Supervisor toggle worth turning off.
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VCF 9 Management Domain Bring-Up with the VCF Installer (VCF 9 Series, Part 8)
A step-by-step VCF 9 management domain bring-up with the VCF Installer: depot setup, the live-validated wizard, what gets deployed, and the DNS sweep that prevents most failures.
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VCF 9 Reference Architecture: Sizing, Topology and Design Trade-offs (VCF 9 Series, Part 7)
The VCF 9 management domain topology, appliance sizing and the standard versus consolidated decision, plus the one appliance (VCF Automation) that quietly drives your whole BOM.
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vSAN ESA vs OSA in VCF 9: Storage Design and When to Choose Which (VCF 9 Series, Part 6)
vSAN ESA vs OSA in VCF 9: single-tier all-NVMe versus two-tier disk groups, the resilience math, the lowered hardware minimums, and a clear verdict on which to choose.
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VCF 9 Network Design: 7 Mistakes That Break Your Deployment (VCF 9 Series, Part 5)
Seven network design errors that fail a VCF 9 bring-up, framed as symptom, cause and fix. The MTU drop on a single transit hop is the one that wastes the most hours.
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VCF 9 Planning and Prerequisites: Sizing, Networking and the Readiness Checklist (VCF 9 Series, Part 4)
Sizing, VLANs, MTU, DNS and the readiness checklist for a VCF 9 deployment. The prerequisites that decide whether your bring-up sails through validation or stalls hours in.
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VCF 9 Licensing Explained: Core Counting, the vSAN TiB Entitlement and 5 Costly Mistakes (VCF 9 Series, Part 3)
VCF 9 licensing looks simple but bites at design time: the 16-core-per-CPU floor, the 1 TiB-per-core vSAN entitlement, and the move of production load balancing to Avi. Five mistakes, with the numbers behind each.
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5 Things That Block vSphere Supervisor Enablement in VCF 9 (and How to Fix Each)
Workload Management says your cluster is ‘incompatible,’ or the Supervisor control plane VMs hang at Configuring. Here are the five most common reasons vSphere Supervisor enablement fails in VCF 9 — and the exact checks and commands to fix each.
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VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Architecture: Fleet, Instances and Domains Explained (VCF 9 Series, Part 2)
The VCF 9 hierarchy is fleet, instance, domain, cluster. Here is what each layer really means, the host-count minimums, and why you should schedule change windows by domain and fleet-services, not by vCenter.
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VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Explained: The Unified Private Cloud Platform (VCF 9 Series, Part 1)
VCF 9 is not VCF 5.x with a new logo. The operate and consume layers moved into the core, Aria became VCF Operations and Automation, and the fleet is the new top-level construct. Here is what actually changed and why it matters.
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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