Tag: VMware
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Datastores and storage basics: where your VMs actually live (VMware for Beginners, Part 6)
A plain-English guide to VMware datastores: what VMFS, NFS and vSAN are, how a VM lives as files on disk, and why thin provisioning is the storage choice most likely to page a junior engineer.
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Anatomy of a virtual machine: vCPU, vRAM, disk and NIC (VMware for Beginners, Part 5)
A virtual machine is just four parts: a vCPU, vRAM, a virtual disk and a virtual NIC. Here is what each one really does, the sane default for each, and the beginner traps that catch new admins.
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What vCenter actually does (VMware for Beginners, Part 4)
ESXi runs your VMs, but vCenter Server is the control room that manages every host from one screen and powers vMotion, HA, and DRS. A plain-English guide for freshers, with the setup gotchas nobody warns you about.
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ESXi, the hypervisor that runs your VMs (VMware for Beginners, Part 3)
A plain-English tour of VMware ESXi: what the hypervisor is, the VMkernel inside it, Type 1 versus Type 2, how you manage a host, and the boot-media trap that catches beginners.
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Physical server or virtual machine: what really changes (VMware for Beginners, Part 2)
A plain-English look at how a virtual machine differs from a physical server, why companies consolidate onto fewer hosts, and the oversubscription metric every fresher should learn first.
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What virtualization is, and why every company runs on it (VMware for Beginners, Part 1)
Virtualization in plain English: what it is, how one physical server safely runs many machines, and why nearly every company you will work for runs on it.
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My VCF 9 Architect (2V0-13.25) Exam Experience
Hey, thanks for visiting here. First of all, I would like to wish you all the best if you are planning to attempt or currently preparing for the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 Architect exam (2V0-13.25). Though I am not the first one sharing this kind of experience, I still thought to write this because…
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VMware Private AI Foundation in VCF 9: Everything You Need to Know (FAQs)
Category Question Answer Deployment & Infrastructure What kind of infrastructure is required to run VMware Private AI on-premises? VMware vSphere / VCF 9 clusters with NVIDIA GPUs (Blackwell GPUs recommended for high-performance AI workloads). Deployment & Infrastructure Can it run on existing VMware vSphere clusters or do we need new hardware? Yes, it integrates with…
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How VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA in VCF 9 is Changing Enterprise AI
A few months ago, I was working with a customer who was running critical workloads on VMware on-premises. They were already using AWS internally for a GenAI chatbot, but now they wanted to expand AI use cases to predict and remediate infrastructure issues, including agentic AI solutions. The challenge? They didn’t want to rely on…
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Zero Downtime for AI Workloads: How VCF 9 Transforms vMotion for AI/ML Environments
Imagine this, your GPUs are crunching away at massive models, everything looks good… and then the dreaded email arrives from IT: “We received a critical patch for ESXi and need to patch the host tonight. Please stop your workload, as there will be slight downtime for heavy workload based VMs during this activity.” Stopping wasn’t…
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How VMware Runs Just ~1% Slower Than Bare Metal in VCF 9 (And Why That’s Amazing)
During one of the migration projects, I was doing workshop sessions with Modern Apps team, and they were pushing hard for bare-metal servers, instead of running on Virtual environment.Their argument was simple: “Virtual machines are slower. We need maximum performance for AI and analytics. Should we really migrate our applications on virtualization platform!” At that…
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An Explanation – How NSX Enhanced Data Path Gives you the 3x Boost in VCF 9?
Let’s start with one of the real time examples I faced in past, I was working with a company that was struggling with slow application performance inside the data center. Business had grown, the number of workloads had tripled, and our users were constantly complaining: “Why does this app take forever to load?”“Why is our…
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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