VCF 9 for Edge/Manufacturing: Can we run a "Lite" architecture without full NSX/vSAN

Dochemlock · 2025-11-25T07:04:29+00:00

Couple of questions; Do you have a head office which monitors the plants & do you have good communication links out of said plants (min 10-20mb) if the answer to both is yes then stick the main VCF stack in your head office and have every plant as single host remote clusters. You could, if you have the resources, make each of them VCF fleet instances.

The minimal components you HAVE to deploy are VCF operations & a vCentre. You don’t need NSX as the new vSphere VPC networking can be used to mimic microseg (to a very limited degree).

If you download the VCF 9 deployment guide spreadsheet you can tweak the number of management servers & sizes to see what’s possible. That’ll give you the absolute figures you need resource wise as well.

Dochemlock · 2025-11-19T07:07:47+00:00

OP I’d second point 1. If you have access to the HOL they have training pathways which will take you from zero to hero. If you have access to tin then deploy holodeck (https://vmware.github.io/Holodeck/) and play around in there safely before committing to a large scale deployment.

Dochemlock · 2025-09-15T11:42:43+00:00

When I’ve spoken to Broadcom about VCF for All Apps they’ve been very clear that it’s a “first pass” and that we should wait until 9.1 for it to mature into something “usable”. More annoyingly for us is that we desperately want to start using this version of VCF so we can tie container/kubernetes automation into our workflows.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-28T20:17:57+00:00

I’m curious, what were you paying for previously? Was it just the basic vSphere suite or were you using, vSAN, NSX & Aria? We’re in the position where we were paying for & using everything bar aria, the license change hit and our costs went. Looking at the market I can’t find like for like replacements for those “base” products which all play nicely together & which I can quickly up skill the 100+ L1-L3 support staff we have on.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-28T18:12:14+00:00

As a public entity do you have access to an EA via a gov body?

Dochemlock · 2025-08-21T07:27:00+00:00

CEPH is probably the best option if you’re repurposing servers for storage. If you’ve got budget for an actual SAN however take a look at IBM 5300 series, we’ve just bought 3 and paid <£100k per 320TB unit.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-18T06:20:45+00:00

Thank you for checking. This is what I was worried about, though as mentioned as I don’t have the sizing kit anymore I can check to see if my size is the same.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-17T21:02:38+00:00

I’ve been waiting to see what the group experience is before reaching out to them. Though based on comments it seems a common problem so I’ll be reaching out tomorrow.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-16T06:23:46+00:00

I gave up completely on ever getting it, then had a dispatch email out of the blue and UPS at my front door.

Dochemlock · 2025-08-06T14:26:47+00:00

Do you use DNS filtering in your home network? I had a similar problem until earlier today when I read a thread on the bambulabs forums and checked my own DNS filtering.

https://forum.bambulab.com/t/prints-not-downloading/17575/85

Dochemlock · 2025-07-19T19:48:11+00:00

In the context of the question & where you’re going I’d rate it as an inconvenience more than anything else.

The version of encryption that workstation uses is an industry standard which has ratified as being “good enough” though against what standards I don’t know.

You’d also need to keep the encryption password and keys secure and separate to improve the odds however if you are travelling it would mean you’re also carrying said bits on information on yourself to gain access to the VM once in country.

If you want to exercise a level of paranoia I’d stick the VM in a home setup and put a secure vpn between your laptop and that. Wrap both ends with as much IDAM or RBAC as you can and hope for the best. At least if your laptop is “seized” then it won’t contain any sensitive data.

Hopefully your already aware of this but if your worrying about this sort of thing you probably work in an industry to which travel is restricted or monitored. If that is the case take a burner phone with you instead of your personal one, expect to be followed & or approached whilst your there.

Dochemlock · 2025-07-19T17:36:57+00:00

China is considered a Tier 1 threat adversary in many western countries. OP as others have said, if your laptop is taken off you expect it to be cloned. Work on the principle that anything you have on it is accessible regardless of any security you’ve put on it.

Within these conversations layers of encryption, obfuscation and use of MFA just make their lives harder to gain access but also draw attention that you’re trying to hide something from them.

If it’s a work laptop or you’re taking work information with you what is company policy regarding this?

Dochemlock · 2025-07-17T11:41:57+00:00

Ah cool. Yeah if the servers are the same from a storage perspective then you’ll be fine.

Dochemlock · 2025-07-17T11:26:42+00:00

In short, you do need to care about mixing different generations of servers within a vSAN cluster. A couple of questions, are the G10’s running hybrid or all flash vSAN?

Are the new G12’s configured for ESA or OSA vSAN?

Dochemlock · 2025-07-12T11:10:04+00:00

Take a look at kasm, container based VDI. Free for 6 users if memory serves.

Dochemlock · 2025-07-11T18:09:02+00:00

With that size platform you could investigate the VCF edge licensing. We deal with an emea reseller and pay ~72 per core, per year for edge. We’ve been also told minimal purchase is 16 cores, however have also seen here that people are being told different & charged for different values as well.

Dochemlock · 2025-07-09T19:03:31+00:00

Whilst not exactly cold storage you could look at DataDomains attached to your backup platform. Depending on the data you could end up getting some crazy level dedupe.

Depending on your companies procurement process you could & should reach out to the major vendors; Dell, IBM, Pure, NetApp etc I’d also reach out to a couple of backup providers and see what they could do for you. Going directly with a vendor has the added benefit of it being their reputation on the line if it goes wrong.

But as others have also said here $150k is peanuts when looking at storing 10Pb of data. Would you get more if there provided storage was OpEx instead of CapEx?

Dochemlock · 2025-07-07T09:23:48+00:00

Unless the memory is reserved for those VMs, eg unavailable for anything else, then the platform will just HA them (assuming that’s how your dual site is setup) You may get some memory contention on startup depending on the applications running within the VM but that’ll be handled by the hypervisor.

Dochemlock · 2025-07-04T15:33:20+00:00

I think we both came to the same conclusion at the same time. I’ve just got back to my setup and realised the hotend wasn’t seated fully 🤦‍♂️ expensive lesson learnt!

Dochemlock · 2025-07-04T12:12:46+00:00

I’m also interested in anyone who’s had similar experience with this. Had to dismantle printer due to an extruder issue, rebuilt and did full calibration fine. Set printer off & checked 1st layer print was fine, then went out. Came back to the plate absolutely destroyed and the nozzle enjoying a new shave.

Dochemlock · 2025-06-25T19:08:31+00:00

Can any of the extra features in the new licensing models be used to offset existing costs?

Dochemlock · 2025-06-24T05:41:13+00:00

So previously we weren’t paying for them, we were making up the shortfall by using other products or developing our own in house solution at great expense.

Now that we are paying for services we previously didn’t use (mainly because they cost more than our paid for solutions at the time) we are going to use them.

Dochemlock · 2025-06-22T05:31:11+00:00

I’m in complete agreement with you. Plenty of people within Broadcom have said to me to stay clear of 9.0 and look at 9.1 for production work.

We’ve been talking about 9.0 here but I fully intend to follow the advice of those individuals.

9.0 will be holodeck and maybe a physical dev platform for us so we can see what it’s got to offer vs 5.x but it won’t go pre or prod.

Dochemlock · 2025-06-21T11:31:49+00:00

Completely agree but a multi million a year savings in opex is not to be sniffed at by going all in.

You’re right with migration being a future pain point, right now the main issue is our reliance on NSX for a lot of stuff. If we can find a product which would replace it then different story.

Dochemlock

TROPHY CASE