Month: June 2025

Modern IT teams are increasingly challenged to manage both traditional virtual machines (VMs) and modern Kubernetes workloads side-by-side. VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 rises to this challenge by tightly integrating vSphere Supervisor, transforming your vSphere clusters into a robust hybrid platform for VMs and Kubernetes.

---

In this Hands-On Lab (HOL-2633-01-VCF-L), you’ll get guided, practical experience on how to unify VM and Kubernetes management using vSphere Supervisor, from foundational concepts to deploying real workloads.

---

📚 Lab Modules at a Glance

Module	Title	Duration	Level
1	What is the vSphere Supervisor?	15 min	Beginner
2	How does the vSphere Supervisor work?	30 min	Beginner

Let’s break down each module.

---

⚙️ Module 1: vSphere Supervisor Concepts and Components

✅ What is vSphere Supervisor?

vSphere Supervisor introduces a declarative Kubernetes control plane natively into your vSphere cluster. This means your cluster can now run:

• VMs via the VM Service
• Kubernetes Pods directly on ESXi hosts (as vSphere Pods)
• Full upstream Kubernetes clusters using vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)

This hybrid model enables a consistent cloud-like experience for both traditional and modern workloads.

🔑 Key Components

• vSphere Zone: Logical boundary to provide high availability. Clusters are mapped to Zones for resilience against failures.
• vSphere Namespace: Think of it as a resource pool with policy-based limits (CPU, memory, storage) for workloads. It maps to Kubernetes namespaces but adds vSphere-specific governance.
• Supervisor Networking: Uses either vSphere networking or NSX. Load balancers ensure external access for workloads.
• Supervisor Storage: Utilizes storage policies to manage placement for VMs, Pods, persistent volumes, and container images.

🧩 Extensible Services

vSphere Supervisor comes with base services like:

• VM Service
• Kubernetes Service
• Velero for backup

Additional services (like Grafana, Harbor, DNS, and vDPP) can be installed modularly to enhance the Supervisor’s capabilities.

---

🛠️ Module 2: Enabling and Configuring vSphere Supervisor

This module is all about getting your hands dirty — you’ll step through setting up vSphere Supervisor, deploying Namespaces, provisioning VMs and Kubernetes clusters, and expanding functionality with services.

⚡ Key Steps:

🔑 1️⃣ Prerequisites

• Prepare clusters with vSAN or shared storage.
• Define storage policies for control plane, VMs, Pods, and VKS clusters.

🔑 2️⃣ Enable vSphere Supervisor

• Connect to the Management vCenter.
• Create vSphere Zones for high availability.
• Use the wizard to configure networking (NSX or vSphere stack), management network, and workload network.
• Select control plane size and storage policy.

(Note: The lab walks through these steps but does not deploy a live Supervisor due to time constraints.)

🔑 3️⃣ Deploy & Configure a Namespace

• Create a new Namespace and bind it to the Supervisor.
• Assign VM Classes (defining VM sizing options).
• Attach storage policies for workloads.
• Create and associate a Content Library to provide VM templates.

🔑 4️⃣ Deploy Workloads

• Deploy a VM using the VM Service and Consumption Interface.
• Attach persistent storage and a Load Balancer.
• Deploy a Kubernetes cluster (VKS) by specifying node pools and cluster config.
• Validate external access via network service cards.

🔑 5️⃣ Add Services

• Expand functionality by uploading YAMLs to register services like Grafana, Harbor, etc.

---

🎓 Summary

✔️ Unified Operations: Manage VMs and Kubernetes side-by-side in the same cluster with consistent policies.
✔️ Self-Service for DevOps: Namespaces, storage, and VM classes empower developers with agility.
✔️ Resilience and Scalability: Zones and Supervisor Services ensure HA and modularity.

If you’re ready to unlock the full power of VMware’s latest vSphere release, the HOL-2630-01-VCF-L hands-on lab is your perfect starting point. This lab provides a practical deep dive into the newest features, enhancements, and operational improvements in vSphere 9.0, all seamlessly integrated into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.

---

In this walkthrough, I’ll break down what you’ll learn, module by module, to help you get the most out of your lab experience.

---

🗂️ Module 1: What’s New in vSphere 9 Overview

Kick things off with a comprehensive overview of what’s new in vSphere 9:

✅ Memory Tiering — Officially introduced, this feature allows NVMe devices to be used as tiered memory, expanding your host’s memory footprint while optimizing costs.
✅ Virtual Hardware Version 22 — Unlocks support for up to 960 logical processors, enhanced device support, and performance improvements for demanding workloads.
✅ VPC in vCenter — Create flexible Virtual Private Clouds and manage public/private networking seamlessly.
✅ Unified Licensing — Say goodbye to license keys — a new secure license file model simplifies lifecycle management.
✅ vSphere Configuration Profiles — The next-gen replacement for Host Profiles, offering cluster-wide desired state config at scale.

You’ll also experience the updated ESX Host Client UI, now with dark mode and deep customization options.

---

🔄 Module 2: vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) – Parallel Remediation

Discover how vLCM is more powerful than ever:

🔹 Staged Updates — Push update payloads to hosts before remediation to minimize maintenance downtime.
🔹 Parallel Remediation — Remediate multiple hosts simultaneously for faster patch cycles — perfect for large clusters.
🔹 Standalone Host Support — Manage isolated hosts via API or the new config profiles.

---

⚙️ Module 3: Resource Management — Enhanced DRS, vMMR, CPU Topology, and Latency

Efficiency meets performance:

✨ Enhanced DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) — Smarter load balancing with new automation levels and predictive DRS for proactive resource allocation.
✨ vMMR (vSphere Memory Monitoring & Remediation) — Gain granular insights into memory usage and performance impact.
✨ Simplified Virtual NUMA — New CPU topology tools simplify configuring vNUMA for VMs, improving latency for sensitive workloads.

---

🧩 Module 4: Guest OS and Workloads

Modern workloads, fully supported:

🔑 Virtual TPM (vTPM) Policies — Clone Windows 11 VMs securely by auto-replacing TPM devices.
📈 Virtual Hardware Upgrades — Upgrade clusters to the latest hardware version in bulk.
🔒 Device Virtualization Extensions — Expanded framework for vendors to build hardware-backed virtual devices with better live migration support.

---

🤝 Module 5: Mixed Vendor Clusters

In vSphere 9, clusters can mix hosts from multiple hardware vendors while still managing updates with cluster-based images. This makes infrastructure more flexible and vendor-agnostic.

---

🔄 Module 6: Live Patch

Zero downtime patching is here:

⏱️ Live Patch — Apply updates to ESXi hosts without reboots or maintenance mode. Improve security posture while keeping workloads running.

---

🧮 Module 7: Introduction to Memory Tiering

Dive deeper into Memory Tiering:

📚 Learn how to set up NVMe drives as cost-effective memory extensions, boosting capacity and lowering DRAM costs.
📊 See how this impacts workload density and CPU utilization.

---

🔑 Module 8: vSphere Licensing and Operations

Simplify your day-to-day management:

🗝️ Unified License Management — Use the VCF Business Services Console to license your entire Software Defined Data Center with a single license file.
📋 One Pane of Glass — Link vCenter instances for holistic operations and monitoring.

Ready to elevate your VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) operations game?
In the latest Hands-On Lab HOL-2610-03-VCF-L, you’ll get practical experience with all the new operational capabilities in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, learning how to monitor, secure, troubleshoot, and manage your private cloud infrastructure efficiently.

---

Below is a deep dive into each module so you know exactly what to expect.

---

📊 Module 1: Monitoring Private Cloud Infrastructure with Diagnostic Findings and VCF Health

Kick off by mastering the new Diagnostic Findings and VCF Health tools.

• Diagnostic Findings offers real-time checks for security advisories (VMSAs), vulnerabilities (CVEs), and best practice deviations. It categorizes issues as Critical, Immediate, or Warning and includes easy links to relevant KB articles.
• VCF Health gives you a clear, unified view of the entire environment—instances, vCenters, clusters, hosts, and NSX. You can quickly pinpoint trouble spots and drill down into domains and specific components.
• Use powerful filters, historical findings, and export features to stay on top of the operational state of your cloud.

🔑 Takeaway: Get proactive issue detection and a health dashboard for streamlined troubleshooting.

---

🌐 Module 2: Monitoring Network Operations

The new Network Operations Dashboard integrates NSX and vSphere network monitoring right into VCF Operations—no more jumping between consoles!

• View the network inventory at a glance: NSX Instances, Edge Clusters, Transport Nodes, and more.
• Check out NSX Health, analyze business application flows, and dig into traffic patterns.
• Use the interactive vSphere Network Inventory to see object relationships visually, expand views, and trace connections down to distributed virtual switches.

🔑 Takeaway: Gain deep insights into your network’s health, traffic, and relationships—all in one place.

---

🗄️ Module 3: Monitoring Storage Operations

Next, manage your storage like a pro:

• The Storage Operations Dashboard centralizes monitoring for vSAN and non-vSAN datastores.
• Analyze storage alerts, usage trends, capacity distribution, and performance.
• Dive into vSAN Clusters to see detailed configurations, efficiency metrics, and IOPS data.

You’ll learn to filter by storage type, run diagnostics, and use dashboards to ensure healthy storage across the environment.

🔑 Takeaway: Proactively monitor and troubleshoot storage issues before they impact workloads.

---

🔒 Module 4: Monitoring Security Operations

Security is a top priority in VCF 9.0—and the new Security Operations Dashboard puts control at your fingertips:

• User Security: Track authentication activity, failed logins, and permission changes with detailed dashboards.
• Infrastructure Security: Review host encryption status, vSAN cluster encryption, advisories, certificate health, and VM encryption in one unified view.
• Use intuitive widgets and drill-down dashboards to manage compliance and spot risks fast.

🔑 Takeaway: Unified, real-time visibility into user actions and infrastructure security helps you strengthen compliance and reduce vulnerabilities.

---

💸 Module 5: Chargeback and Billing

Finally, master cost transparency and control:

• Explore the enhanced Chargeback and Billing capabilities integrated into the unified operations console.
• Dashboards let you view chargeback summaries by organizations, projects, region quotas, and running workloads.
• Generate and manage bills seamlessly, and preview tenant-facing billing interfaces for greater transparency.

🔑 Takeaway: Simplify financial operations and ensure tenants have clear insights into their cloud usage and costs.

---

✅Summary

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations introduces robust, integrated monitoring and management tools designed to:

• Unify health checks, diagnostics, and security monitoring
• Provide actionable insights across infrastructure, network, storage, and user activity
• Streamline chargeback and billing for clearer financial accountability

Ready to unleash true self-service private cloud automation? VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 is packed with robust automation features, and the HOL-2610-02-VCF-L lab is your guided hands-on tour to master them.

---

Whether you’re a cloud admin, service provider, or an automation enthusiast, this lab takes you from zero to hero, showing you exactly how VCF 9.0 streamlines infrastructure operations, enforces governance, and accelerates modern application deployment. Here’s an inside look at what you’ll experience.

---

🎓 Module 1: Getting Started with VCF Automation

⏱️ Length: 15 min | Level: Beginner

You’ll kick things off with the new Quick Start Wizard, a major usability boost in VCF 9.0. It offers both manual and automated workflows to configure your environment in minutes.

💡 Lab highlight: Experience an interactive simulation that mimics a real deployment—perfect if you want to see the process without spinning up actual infrastructure.

---

🗂️ Module 2: Dive Into the Provider Portal

⏱️ Length: 15 min | Level: Beginner

The Provider Portal is your mission control. In this module, you’ll:

✅ Explore the Infrastructure Overview—see organizations, regions, supervisors, and content libraries at a glance.

✅ Configure Access Control—add users, assign or create custom roles, and manage permissions.

✅ Connect Identity Providers—integrate OIDC, LDAP, or SAML for centralized authentication. Bring your enterprise-grade security posture directly into VCF Automation.

---

🏢 Module 3: Master Organization Management & Governance

⏱️ Length: 30 min | Level: Advanced

Here’s where things get powerful:

✨ Content Libraries: Learn to create tenant-specific libraries to manage VM images and deployment blueprints. Unlike provider libraries, these are isolated per organization, supporting granular control.

🔑 IaaS Policies: Enforce compliance automatically. Create policies to govern how resources are provisioned and what users can do post-deployment. For example, the lab guides you through setting an IaaS Resource Policy to block unauthorized VM deployments—then tests it live to see policy enforcement in action.

🧭 Governance Tools: Leverage centralized billing, resource sharing, and collaboration while keeping strict security boundaries between tenants.

---

☁️ Module 4: Deploying Modern Applications

⏱️ Length: 30 min | Level: Advanced

This final module shows how VCF 9.0 transforms modern app delivery:

🐳 Supervisor Clusters: Understand how vSphere Supervisor and Namespaces abstract infrastructure complexity, letting users consume IaaS resources through Kubernetes APIs.

⚙️ Blueprint Design: Hands-on time! You’ll deploy:

• A Virtual Machine using a pre-defined blueprint and YAML.
• A Kubernetes Cluster with just a few clicks.

🔍 Day 2 Operations: Explore post-deployment operations—view resources, manage them through intuitive interfaces, and understand the cloud-native approach to scaling and managing workloads.

---

✅ Why This Lab is a Must-Try

By the end of HOL-2610-02-VCF-L, you’ll have practical experience with:

• Building tenant organizations
• Managing user access and identities
• Enforcing organizational policies
• Deploying VMs and Kubernetes clusters on-demand

If you’re ready to level up your understanding of modern cloud infrastructure, the HOL-2610-01-VCF-L Hands-on Lab is your best launchpad into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0. In this detailed guide, I’ll walk you through the lab’s structure, key learning points, and the new features it reveals — straight from VMware’s latest release.

---

📌 Lab Overview

This lab is perfect for beginners and experienced admins alike. In about 75 minutes, it covers:

✅ Module 1: VCF Constructs, Components, Operations, and Identity
✅ Module 2: How to Deploy VCF — from scratch or by converging existing infrastructure
✅ Module 3: How to boost productivity with Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs)

By the end, you’ll know how to build, manage, and scale a robust private cloud platform with the very latest VMware tools.

---

🔑 Module 1 — VMware Cloud Foundation Overview

👉 Key Constructs

At the core of VCF 9.0 are a few new concepts:

• VCF Private Cloud: The top-level logical unit, representing your entire managed cloud.
• VCF Fleet: A set of resources managed together — including VCF Operations & Automation.
• VCF Instance: The building block of a Fleet — includes a Management Domain (for control) and optional Workload Domains (where user apps run).
• Availability Zones & Regions: Logical segments for fault tolerance and geo-distribution.

👉 Updated Components

VCF 9.0 refines its component structure:

VCF 5.x	VCF 9.0
VMware Cloud Builder	VCF Installer
SDDC Manager	SDDC Manager (via VCF Operations)
VMware Aria Ops	VCF Operations
VMware vIDM	VCF Identity Broker

The new VCF Operations console unifies:

• Monitoring & Health: Diagnostics, resource health.
• Lifecycle Management: Patching and upgrades.
• Fleet Management: SSO, certificates, tags, config drift.

Bonus: The new VCF Identity Broker (IdB) replaces vIDM for Single Sign-On — making authentication cleaner and more integrated.

---

🛠️ Module 2 — Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation

You have two main options:

✅ Deploy New

• Plan: Use the Planning Workbook to gather FQDNs, IPs, VLANs, and credentials.
• Prepare: Ready your ESX hosts.
• Deploy: Use the VCF Installer Appliance, which now supports Python, Java, PowerCLI, and OpenAPI 3.0 — so automation is a breeze.

🔁 Converge Existing Infrastructure

Already have vCenter and ESX running? Good news:

• You can upgrade and converge your environment to VCF 9.0 using the Installer.
• Supported topologies include everything from simple clusters to more advanced setups with Aria Ops and Automation.

Tip: The lab’s Interactive Simulations show exactly how this works, step-by-step.

---

🌐 Module 3 — Increase Productivity with Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs)

A major highlight of VCF 9.0 is its native VPC and Transit Gateway support:

• VPCs provide a consistent, multi-tenant network model, visible directly in vCenter.
• Admins and end-users can deploy, manage, and monitor VPCs alongside compute and storage.
• It simplifies cloud-like networking inside your private cloud — no need to hop between tools.

---

🔒 Day 2 Capabilities

Beyond setup, the lab also covers:

• Lifecycle Depots: Online/Offline binaries for flexible upgrades.
• Password & Certificate Management: Update, remediate, or auto-renew easily from the console.
• Config Drift & Tags: Monitor deviations from desired configs and keep objects organized.
• Security & Compliance: Visualize your fleet’s security posture, audit events, and remediate risks — all in one dashboard.

---

📚 Key Takeaway

The HOL-2610-01-VCF-L lab is more than an overview — it’s a practical sandbox to test VMware’s latest unified operations, automation, and networking innovations for private cloud. Whether you’re modernizing existing clusters or starting fresh, VCF 9.0’s new tools streamline every step.

---

🎓 Try It Yourself

✅ Duration: ~75 mins
✅ Free & self-paced
✅ Includes guided interactive simulations

👉 Start now: VMware Hands-on Labs — or search for HOL-2610-01-VCF-L

Ready to dive into the exciting world of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0? The latest release brings powerful new capabilities for modern, unified private cloud environments — and the best way to get hands-on is with the updated VMware HOLs.

Below, I’ve rounded up the top new labs covering Platform, Automation, Operations, vSphere updates, and Kubernetes integration — so you can quickly see what’s new and where to start.

---

☁️ 1️⃣ What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 – Platform

Lab: HOL-2610-01-VCF-L
Level: Beginner
Modules:

• VMware Cloud Foundation Overview (30 min) – Get familiar with core concepts like Private Clouds, Fleets, and Instances.
• Deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (30 min) – Walk through planning, deployment, and convergence of existing infrastructure with the VCF Installer.
• Increase Productivity with Virtual Private Clouds (15 min) – Explore how VPCs and Transit Gateways enable flexible, multi-tenant networking, tightly integrated with vCenter.

✅ Why take this lab? It’s your foundational guide to the new VCF Operations interface and the deployment workflow — great for newcomers or those upgrading from older VCF versions.

---

⚙️ 2️⃣ What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 – Automation

Lab: HOL-2610-02-VCF-L
Level: Beginner–Advanced
Modules:

• Getting Started with Automation (15 min) – Learn to set up tenant orgs using the quick start wizard.
• Provider Portal (15 min) – Get to know infrastructure overview, access control, and identity providers.
• Organization Management and Governance (30 min) – Dive deep into content libraries, IaaS policies, and governance.
• Deploying Modern Applications (30 min) – Practice deploying VMs and Kubernetes clusters for modern apps.

✅ Why take this lab? Automate self-service private clouds, enforce governance, and speed up application delivery — key skills for cloud admins and SREs.

---

🛡️ 3️⃣ What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 – Operations

Lab: HOL-2610-03-VCF-L
Level: Beginner
Modules:

• Monitoring Private Cloud Infrastructure (30 min)
• Monitoring Network Operations (15 min)
• Monitoring Storage Operations (30 min)
• Monitoring Security Operations (15 min)
• Chargeback (15 min)

✅ Why take this lab? Master health monitoring, flow analysis, vSAN management, security operations, and cost transparency with chargeback — all with the new unified Operations interface.

---

⚡ 4️⃣ What’s New with vSphere in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

Lab: HOL-2630-01-VCF-L
Level: Beginner–Advanced
Modules:

• vSphere 9 Overview (30 min)
• Lifecycle Manager (15 min)
• Resource Management (30 min)
• Guest OS and Workloads (15 min)
• Mixed Vendor Clusters (15 min)
• Live Patch (15 min)
• Memory Tiering (15 min)
• Licensing and Operations (15 min)

✅ Why take this lab? Learn how vSphere 9.0 simplifies license management with Unified Licensing, enhances performance with Memory Tiering, enables Live Patching with zero downtime, and makes cluster lifecycle operations smoother — even across mixed hardware vendors.

---

☸️ 5️⃣ Unifying VM and Kubernetes Management with vSphere Supervisor

Lab: HOL-2633-01-VCF-L
Level: Beginner
Modules:

• What is the vSphere Supervisor? (15 min)
• How does the vSphere Supervisor work? (30 min)

✅ Why take this lab? See how vSphere Supervisor bridges VMs and Kubernetes, get hands-on with configuration, and deploy Kubernetes clusters alongside traditional VMs — all from vCenter.

---

🎓 Ready to Learn?

All these labs are free, self-paced, and available right now in the VMware Hands-on Labs catalog. Whether you’re planning a fresh deployment, modernizing operations, or integrating Kubernetes, these labs ensure you’re ready to make the most of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.

👉 Check out the labs and start exploring: VMware Hands-on Labs