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VCF 9.1 - Deploying the VCF License Server Directly to an ESX Host

07.24.2026 by William Lam // Leave a Comment

For most customers, a single VCF License Server, which is automatically deployed as part of a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) deployment, is sufficient to provide centralized license management for all VCF components. A single VCF License Server and VCF Operations instance can manage both VCF and VVF entitlements, so deploying additional VCF License Servers provides no additional benefit.


While additional VCF License Servers (LS) can certainly be deployed, the primary use cases are replacing an existing VCF LS or supporting extreme edge deployments where vCenter Server has limited connectivity to the primary data center and requires a VCF LS to be co-located with the edge deployment.

The VCF LS is provided as a virtual appliance in OVA format. The typical deployment workflow uses vCenter Server, where the VCF LS uses OVF properties, like most virtual appliances, to configure itself during deployment.

With that said, if you need to deploy the VCF LS directly to an ESX host, this is certainly possible using OVF Tool, which can inject the required OVF properties as part of the deployment workflow.

[Read more...]

Categories // ESXi, VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware vSphere Foundation Tags // VCF 9.1

VCF 9.1 - vSphere Back-in-Time Support for Upgrade, Converge and Import

07.21.2026 by William Lam // 1 Comment

Back-in-time vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) releases can be a little confusing in the context of upgrades. This occurs when the source version, such as vSphere 8.0 Update 3j or VCF 5.2.4, was released AFTER the target version you are upgrading to, such as VCF 9.1.

Today, there are three supported paths to the latest VCF 9.1 release:

  • Upgrade an existing VCF deployment to a VCF 9.1 Fleet
  • Converge an existing vSphere-based (non-VCF) deployment into a new VCF 9.1 Fleet
  • Import an existing vSphere-based (non-VCF) deployment into an existing VCF 9.1 Fleet

The table below summarizes the latest supported back-in-time release compatibility for each of these deployment scenarios.

[Read more...]

Categories // VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // VCF 9.1

VCF Infrastructure Services (VIS) Appliance for VCF 9.1 Lab/PoC

07.20.2026 by William Lam // 6 Comments

Since the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 back in May, customer excitement has been tremendous, with many deploying the latest release in their labs for evaluation and some even using it for pre-production environments. VCF 9.1 introduces a wide range of new capabilities, but experimenting with certain features can sometimes require supporting infrastructure that may not already exist in a lab environment, such as an OIDC provider for VCF Single Sign-On (SSO) or a web server to host VCF binaries.

I noticed a growing number of point solutions emerging within the community to simplify VCF deployments and make it easier to explore its capabilities in a lab environment. With the advent of AI, the barrier to entry has dropped dramatically, allowing more people with little to no programming experience to build useful tools.

I had been using ChatGPT and Gemini for quite some time but had not yet tried any of the newer agentic development tools, such as Claude Code or Cursor. Since I was already active in the OpenAI ecosystem, I decided to give Codex a try, especially given the rapid pace of development the platform was going through.

Here is a tweet from me on May 16, 2026 on my initial experience w/Codex:

Once you experience Agentic Dev ... 🤯

Had idea last night, wasn't taking it seriously. Ask Codex (free) to build me HTML prototype, it looked so good! Ask it to go further this morning, ran out of free request ... subscribed to Pro to continue pet project 😎

Future is wild! 🚀

— William Lam (@lamw) May 16, 2026

[Read more...]

Categories // VMware Cloud Foundation Tags // VCF 9.1

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William is Distinguished Platform Engineering Architect in the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Division at Broadcom. His primary focus is helping customers and partners build, run and operate a modern Private Cloud using the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) platform.

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Recent

  • VCF 9.1 - Deploying the VCF License Server Directly to an ESX Host 07/24/2026
  • VCF 9.1 - vSphere Back-in-Time Support for Upgrade, Converge and Import 07/21/2026
  • VCF Infrastructure Services (VIS) Appliance for VCF 9.1 Lab/PoC 07/20/2026
  • Quick Tip - Automatically Generate VCF Download Tool Commands with Express Patches for VCF 9.0.2 and 9.1.0 07/17/2026
  • VCF 9.1 - Automating VCF Backup Scheduling with the Fleet LCM API 07/17/2026
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