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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.
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VCF-to-VCF Migration: The Parallel-Instance Reference Architecture for VCF 9 (VCF 9 Series, Part 17)
How to move an older VCF estate onto VCF 9 by building a parallel instance and migrating workloads across with HCX Service Mesh and Replication Assisted vMotion, including sizing, waves, cutover, and the RAV restrictions that derail migrations.
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How to Migrate Workloads into VCF 9 with HCX and vMotion (VCF 9 Series, Part 16)
A field runbook for moving production VMs onto a VCF 9 workload domain with VCF Operations HCX 9.0: when to use vMotion, Bulk Migration or RAV, how to plan migration waves, and the gotchas that derail cutover.
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Migrating Older VCF to VCF 9: 7 Things That Bite You in the Upgrade (VCF 9 Series, Part 15)
Upgrading an older VCF environment to 9.0 is mostly smooth, until it is not. Here are seven things that bite real migrations, from the 5.2.x floor and the vLCM image requirement to the identity and logging components that have no upgrade path at all.
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Bringing Existing vSAN and NSX Under VCF 9: The Brownfield Import Requirements (VCF 9 Series, Part 14)
The VCF 9 import workflow brings an existing vCenter, vSAN and NSX in as a workload domain, but it switches on the Distributed Firewall and trips over ELM, standard switches and baselines. Here is what actually breaks in the field and how to get ahead of it.
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How to Convert vSphere to VCF 9 with the Converge Workflow (VCF 9 Series, Part 13)
Converging a standalone vSphere environment into a VCF 9 management domain is mostly about clearing the right prerequisites before you launch the Installer. Here is the runbook, the blockers that stop a converge cold, and the version matrix.
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VCF 9 Adoption Paths: When to Converge, Import or Start Fresh (VCF 9 Series, Part 12)
VCF 9 offers four adoption paths from vSphere. Here is how converge, import, expand and greenfield differ, plus a decision matrix and tree to choose the right one for your estate.
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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.
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.
Recommendations & Endorsements
Pranay has very deep technical knowledge and exceptional capabilities. He has strong ability to well-manage complex situations and deliver the customer expectations with high standards of satisfaction. We worked together in one of most complex migration projects and Pranay delivered flawlessly.
Pranay was my VMware Architect on one of our financial accounts at IBM. He was instrumental in documenting and recommending our reference architecture. As a Chief Architect, you are only as good as your team that supports you. Pranay was top notch.
Pranay is proactive, result oriented, responsible and technically sound. Always ready to put all his energy to get the job done. Exceptional troubleshooting skills in Windows Server, virtualization and VMware — a great asset to any company.
Pranay is one of the most talented and dedicated persons I have ever worked with. His vast knowledge from different domains enables him to discuss and help on almost every topic in IT. Needless to say, he is expert of experts in VMware.
DrJha