Daniel Micanek virtual Blog – Like normal Dan, but virtual.
Discover the biggest VMware Explore 2025 announcements on GPU virtualization. Learn how vSphere 9.0 introduces vGPU management, MIG support, NVLink scaling, GPU-aware vMotion, and new monitoring tools to accelerate AI workloads at scale.
Are your CPUs memory-starved while your infrastructure struggles with underutilization and growing costs? Enter Memory Tiering with NVMe — a groundbreaking feature in vSphere 9.0 that promises up to 40% lower TCO by intelligently managing your memory resources.
Memory tiering allows ESXi to use NVMe devices as a secondary memory tier, extending beyond traditional DRAM. By classifying memory pages as hot, warm, cold, or very cold, vSphere can dynamically move less frequently used pages to NVMe-backed memory. This unlocks better VM consolidation, more predictable performance, and optimized CPU usage.
Ideal for general workloads and tiered VMs, but not supported for latency-sensitive or passthrough-based VMs. Ensure your NVMe meets Broadcom’s vSAN compatibility requirements and configure the DRAM:NVMe ratio wisely (default is 1:1).
Memory tiering isn’t just a cool buzzword — it’s a strategic shift that aligns your infrastructure with modern performance and cost demands. Whether you’re scaling your VDI environment or looking to cut memory costs without compromising on performance, NVMe Memory Tiering in vSphere 9.0 is a game changer.
| Description | Command |
|---|---|
| Check maintenance mode | esxcli system maintenanceMode get |
| List storage devices | esxcli storage core adapter device list |
| Create NVMe tier device | esxcli system tierdevice create -d <device> <vendor> <id> |
| List tier devices | esxcli system tierdevice list |
| Enable kernel memory tiering | esxcli system settings kernel set -s MemoryTiering -v TRUE |
| Verify tiering status | esxcli system settings kernel list -o MemoryTiering |
| Reboot ESXi | reboot |
Explore 2025 Session Recap – INVB1158LV
Are you looking to maximize AI/ML performance in your virtualized environment? At VMware Explore 2025, I attended a compelling session — INVB1158LV: Accelerating AI Workloads: Mastering vGPU Management in VMware Environments — that unpacked how to effectively configure and scale GPUs for AI workloads in vSphere.
This blog post shares key takeaways from the session and outlines how to use vGPU, MIG, and Passthrough to achieve optimal performance for AI inference and training on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.
✅ Example profiles: grid_a100-8c, grid_a100-4-20c
✅ Example profiles: MIG 1g.5gb, MIG 2g.10gb, MIG 3g.20gb
✅ Assignable via vSphere UI with profiles like grid_a100-3-20c
| Mode | Best For | Sharing Type |
|---|---|---|
| Time Slicing | LLM training, dev/test environments | Time-shared |
| MIG | Production inference, multitenancy | Spatial (hardware) |
| Passthrough | Maximum performance for single workload | Not shared |
One of the standout improvements presented during session INVB1158LV was the vMotion optimization for VMs using vGPUs. With vSphere 8.0 U3 and VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, the way vMotion handles GPU memory has been completely reengineered to minimize downtime (stun time) during live migration.
Instead of migrating all GPU memory during the VM stun phase, 70% of the vGPU cold data is now pre-copied in the pre-copy stage, and only the final 30% is checkpointed during stun. This greatly accelerates live migration even for massive LLM workloads running on multi-GPU systems.
📊 Example results with Llama 3.1 models:
These enhancements make zero-downtime AI infrastructure upgrades and scaling possible, even for large language model deployments
I had the pleasure of attending the excellent session “Deploying Minimal VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Lab” by Alan Renouf and William Lam at VMware Explore 2025. It was packed with practical advice, hardware insights, and field-tested tips on how to stand up a fully functional VCF environment—even on a tight budget.
Whether you’re a home lab enthusiast, enterprise architect, or just VCF-curious, here’s a recap of the key takeaways.
Here’s the juicy part—real-world deployment tips and overrides:
> cat /home/vcf/feature.properties
feature.vcf.internal.single.host.domain = true
> echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.shIf your ESXi host doesn’t have a 10GbE NIC:
> cat /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application.properties
enable.speed.of.physical.nics.validation = false
> echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.shVCF Installer will fail validation if your SSD or controller is not on the vSAN ESA HCL. Install a “mock” VIB to bypass:
esxcli software vib install -v /tmp/vsan-mock.vibBy default, the VCF installer requires HTTPS:
cat /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/application-prod.properties
lcm.depot.adapter.httpsEnabled=false
systemctl restart lcmYou don’t need a full-blown web server:
python http_server_auth.py --bind 192.168.1.100 --user myuser --password mysecurepassword --port 443 --directory /myrepoHere’s an example BOM shared by the presenters:
This setup is small, powerful, and flexible enough for a complete VCF 9.0 deployment.
Here’s the summarized 8-step flow:
This session truly showcased how far VCF has come in terms of flexibility and accessibility. More info: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x in a Box.
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Data Services Manager 9.0 introduces support for a new Data Service, namely Microsoft SQL Server. This is currently tech preview and should be treated as non-production until full support is available. Customers can use this integration to deploy both MS SQL Server Instances and MS SQL Server […]
Good news here for customers who use iSCSI in their current vSphere environments and are looking to move to VCF. I recently received a query regarding support for iSCSI in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0. To be exact, the query was related to iSCSI-backed VMFS volumes, […]
VCF 9.0 is here! At the core of VCF is VCF Automation, which powers the private cloud self-service experience. Learn more about the three game-changing design innovations for private cloud, waiting at your fingertips.
Happy Sunday! Before the wave of announcements starts rolling out from VMware Explore Las Vegas, which starts tomorrow, I wanted to share a quick update. 😅 I have been pretty swamped for the past couple of months, so it has taken a bit more time to get the latest Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances […]
From key announcements to community connections—Day 2 at VMware Explore 2025 in Las Vegas has delivered on big Ideas and bold Innovations. Learn more in the recap.
Welcome to VMware Explore 2025, where thousands of explorers have gathered at The Venetian Convention and Expo Center to harness the power of private cloud. Reporting live from Nevada, here’s your recap of Day 2.
How to deploy VVF/VCF 9.0 using VMUG Advantage & VCP-VCF Certification Entitlement
VMUG Advantage members who have recently earned their VCP-VCF certification are entitled to non-commercial VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licenses for personal use. When logging into the Broadcom Certification Portal, you may have noticed that only perpetual licenses for VCF 5.x are available, […]
