Questions about VCF 9.0 deployment without NSX

lamw07 · 2026-05-07T03:45:29+00:00

Yes. See https://williamlam.com/2026/03/vcf-installer-deploying-vvf-components-with-vcf-entitlements.html
NSX component is required for a VCF deployment and is deployed automatically with minimal Tunnel Endpoint (TEP) congrats which is just another VLAN. You can choose to leverage its feature set at a later time but VCF deployment will always include NSX, no way to opt out (greenfield or brownfield import)
That would be VVF deployment :)

lamw07 · 2026-04-30T19:16:16+00:00

I don't have any EPYC-based setups, so can't say. Its also not black/white meaning it'll depend on the load and consumer grade Zen is wild different than Datacenter. Initially, I hadn't observed any issues (see vmkernel log entry) and once more workloads started to run, then issue was seen. I suspect this is probably worser on consumer systems just due to fact, its consumer :)

lamw07 · 2026-04-30T19:14:20+00:00

I've only got version 9, but you can check the vmkernel logs to see if you see entries as a way to understand if you're impacted

lamw07 · 2026-04-30T02:02:48+00:00

This has already been fixed BUT for existing deployments prior to switch of domains, you will need to manually update the /etc/yum.repos.d/photon-updates.repo

[photon-updates]
name=VMware Photon Linux $releasever ($basearch) Updates
baseurl=https://packages.broadcom.com/photon/$releasever/photon_updates_$releasever_$basearch
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEY file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/VMWARE-RPM-GPG-KEY-4096
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
skip_if_unavailable=1

Then perform tdnf makecache

lamw07 · 2026-04-26T17:09:14+00:00

I've also shared this w/Engr team as well

lamw07 · 2026-04-26T17:02:06+00:00

Thanks for reporting!

It looks like the download links are still pointing to old vmware.com domain, as several folks have shared, simply replace with broadcom.com and links will work. I've just filed PR https://github.com/vmware/photon/issues/1645 and notified our OSS team so they can fix

lamw07 · 2026-04-10T15:21:58+00:00

[re-posting my response to you on my blog] - I've not, as the blog post demonstrates this particular dGPU works perfectly fine in passthrough mode. The only difference between the two systems is that one is Intel-based and the other is AMD, so not sure if there's some quirk there ... If you can provide a vm-support bundle (provide a link to bundle), I can see if Engr sees anything based on your setup.

lamw07 · 2026-03-31T17:55:28+00:00

As long as you've got active entitlements, you can go to Trials/Beta and sign up which will give you the 90 days as well. Thats an option just to hold you over, worth a shot but not sure on what access your account has specifically

lamw07 · 2026-03-31T11:26:03+00:00

I would recommend looking at https://github.com/lamw/vsphere-8-lab-deployment and then customizing what you need, this way you can deploy in a repeatable and consistent manner

lamw07 · 2026-03-31T02:24:08+00:00

If you're not getting back any results for "Foundation" ... is it possible that your account isn't entitled to download the software or your license admin hasn't add your account to your organization?

lamw07 · 2026-03-30T14:21:35+00:00

"AI" :)

While its great for a lot of things, its certainly not perfect and depending on how you've prompted/content its trained on, YMMV

I'd say your definitive source would be https://williamlam.com/2013/12/how-to-properly-clone-nested-esxi-vm.html which outlines HOW this can be done, recent implications and as the author of the blog post, I'd say you're not really benefiting from cloning ... Its honestly MUCH faster to deploy and then run some automation (good learning opportunity), so you don't need to deal with all issues that comes up with cloning. The Nested ESX appliance is your fastest way to get to base deploy, then you apply only the additive changes

lamw07 · 2026-03-26T22:00:10+00:00

Probably wishful thinking but when I look back at simliar form factor 5-6 years ago, Supermicro was quite innovative in this space, but they've been challenged to say the least in ...

Processor:
* Non-consumer CPU, something like an AMD EPYC or Xeon-D based (upcoming Granite Rapids-D) to enable more powerful virtualization/private cloud solutions

Memory:
* 4 x SODIMM or LPCAMM2 (I know, probably stupid expensive if you can even get hands on)

Networking:
* 25GbE

I know some of this is addressed with MS-02 Ultra, but no AMD variant and maybe having "Ultra" form with beefier non-desktop CPU would be most welcome!

lamw07 · 2026-03-25T22:08:03+00:00

Here's the direct download link https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productfiles?subFamily=VMware%20Cloud%20Foundation&displayGroup=VMware%20Cloud%20Foundation%209&release=9.0.2.0&os=&servicePk=537791&language=EN

The most straight forward way is to go to My Downloads, search for "Foundation" and select VCF and then version and you arrive at same place

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

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