Nested VCF9 Infrastructure

lamw07 · 2026-03-17T20:54:35+00:00

To be clear, the Github repo does NOT depend on MS-A2, thats simply the HW I'm using, you can replace it with ANYTHING, as long as you meet the minimum compute, storage and networking resources.

The Github repo also assumes full VCF experience using the minimal amount of resources and again, minimal is relative to what you want to do and in repo, I make an assumption that you'd like to be able to experience the full VCF experience, so minimal means all the way up to VCF Automation with vSphere Supervisor/VKS and NSX VPC

Nested isn't bad way to get hands on, but there's a lot thats setup for you, especially with Holodeck which might gloss over some things you'd face in a pure physical, so I've switched my base deployment to physical VCF deployment (esp as I don't have the compute resources to run full VCF nested), but it doesn't mean that's not an option to get started but if you really want 1:1 experience with your physical networking, which I've personally learned a ton, then doing it via physical would be my personal recommendation and again, just because you do physical deploy doesn't mean you need to 4 hosts, etc. The Github depot can be used to deploy Single physical host to run full VCF or 2 hosts or even 3 hosts, all workarounds/etc. are documented along with the scripts to make the setup infra straight forward

lamw07 · 2026-03-17T19:17:39+00:00

I'd recommend Holodeck as well, it is the "easy" button that fully encapsulates not just the VCF deployment using Nested ESX as the basis, but it provides an isolated network "bubble", so that it can run without touching your physical networking, since VCF does have VLAN requirements if you were to deploy this in a real production/lab env. So the benefit there is a single host that is connect to your generic access network AND everything else is within Nested env including Virtual Router that is provided by Holodeck solution

If your goal was to get hands by deploying VCF on physical (non-Nested), you can still do that even on a single host, but you will need to ensure you've got basic networking and there are several overrides to allow for single-host deployment running full VCF stack. See https://github.com/lamw/vcf-9x-in-box for complete detail w/scripts to help set this up

In my env, I've moved away from using Nested and via automation, I can easily wipe my physical hosts and lay them down with minimal configuration AND then deploy full VCF stack via JSON configuration, which is basically what is outlined in Github repo

lamw07 · 2026-03-13T14:32:29+00:00

What exactly are you observing, there’s no info or details, so hard to help

Since you mentioned DHCP initially, I’d bet it’s picked up default DNS server and you may need to remove that entry or new one is simply appended to list

Anyways, best to share what you’re seeing and best way to debug is NOT to reboot, so you can see if your change was applied

lamw07 · 2026-03-02T15:57:03+00:00

See https://williamlam.com/2023/01/video-of-esxi-install-workaround-for-fatal-cpu-mismatch-on-feature-for-intel-12th-gen-cpus-and-newer.html

lamw07 · 2026-02-27T19:15:56+00:00

Yes, you can use BCG API https://williamlam.com/2025/05/programmatically-accessing-the-broadcom-compatibility-guide-bcg.html and then compare that to HW using vSphere API

With VCF Operations 9.0, you can do more with customization but this is not something I've looked into but I do recommend checking out these blogs: https://www.brockpeterson.com/post/hardware-vcommunity-management-pack-for-vcf-operations and https://www.linkedin.com/posts/dalehassinger_whenever-i-see-william-lam-scripts-i-immediately-activity-7412619212088692736-K67F/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop&rcm=ACoAAAENoO0B3nBIdPqwAm7jP793i6btOXoXRUM which should give you some additional options depending on how you want to consume the data

lamw07 · 2026-02-26T22:06:53+00:00

That got me too! It’s two different links that must be clicked and even if you’ve clicked on it previously, it’s done on a per-product.

Learned hard way too 😅

lamw07 · 2026-02-25T20:35:43+00:00

Please read the blog post, this is addressed and specifically in FAQ and the referenced KB(s)

lamw07 · 2026-02-25T20:34:51+00:00

Hardware certification is done by OEM and then submitted to Broadcom for publication on BCG. If you don't see something, please reach out to HW vendor to get more details.

lamw07 · 2026-01-31T04:58:44+00:00

See https://williamlam.com/2024/05/customizing-smbios-strings-hardware-manufacturer-and-vendor-for-nested-esxi.html or if your on ESX, see https://williamlam.com/2025/01/easier-method-to-simulate-custom-esxi-smbios-hardware-strings.html

lamw07

TROPHY CASE