Minimal VCF 9.0 Lab: 2 Hosts, 1 NIC and the CLI Overrides

Short answer: a minimal VCF 9.0 lab needs only 2 ESXi hosts with NFS or 3 with vSAN/FC, a single 10GbE NIC, and singleton appliances. For nested labs you can even put the VCF Installer and SDDC Manager on one host. The tricks that make it work in a homelab are a single-host domain flag, a NIC-speed validation bypass, a vSAN ESA HCL mock VIB, and an HTTP offline depot, all shown below with the exact commands. Reference hardware: MINISFORUM MS-A2 with 128 GB RAM.

For VCF 9.1, my VCF pre-deployment checklist lists every DNS, NTP, network, host and licensing check to finish before you run the installer.

To study the sessions by topic, my VMware Explore sessions mind map lists all 404 Explore 2025 and 2026 Las Vegas breakouts with decks, videos and study summaries.

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.

Table of Contents

Key Changes: VCF 5.x vs VCF 9.x

VCF 5.x:

Required 4+ ESXi hosts
Monolithic installer
vSAN required
3-node NSX cluster
10GbE NICs mandatory

VCF 9.x:

More modular design
Only 2–3 ESXi hosts required
1 x 10GbE NIC sufficient
Support for singleton appliances
Flexible storage (vSAN ESA, FC, NFS)

VCF 9.0 Tips & Tricks (with real CLI guidance)

Here’s the juicy part—real-world deployment tips and overrides:

1. Minimum ESXi Host Requirements

For vSAN/FC: 3 ESXi hosts
For NFS: 2 ESXi hosts
⚠️ You can install VCF Installer + SDDC Manager even on a single ESXi host (great for nested labs!)

The vCPU, RAM and disk each appliance needs are listed in VCF 9.0 minimum requirements per component. To turn them into a host count for your own hardware, use the VCF host sizing calculator.

> cat /home/vcf/feature.properties

feature.vcf.internal.single.host.domain = true

> echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

2. NIC Validation Bypass

If 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.sh

3. vSAN HCL Override

VCF 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.vib

Details and the cleanup after deployment: vSAN ESA disk HCL workaround for VCF 9.0.

4. Offline Depot HTTPS Requirement

By default, the VCF installer requires HTTPS:

cat /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/application-prod.properties

lcm.depot.adapter.httpsEnabled=false

systemctl restart lcm

VCF 9.1 supports a plain HTTP offline depot without this edit: see VCF 9.1 HTTP offline depot support. The VCF offline depot generator builds the web server configuration for you.

5. Basic Auth Requirement

You 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 /myrepo

Reference Hardware for a Minimal VCF 9.0 Lab

Here’s an example BOM shared by the presenters:

MinisForum MS-A2 w/ AMD Ryzen 7945HX (16c/32t)
128GB DDR5 (2x64GB SODIMM)
3x M.2 NVMe SSDs
10GbE SFP+ NIC + 2.5GbE onboard
MikroTik 5-port 10GbE switch (for under $200)

This setup is small, powerful, and flexible enough for a complete VCF 9.0 deployment.

Deployment Walkthrough – TL;DR

Here’s the summarized 8-step flow:

Install ESXi (kickstart from USB)
Deploy VCF Installer VM
Connect to Offline Depot
Run Installer with JSON
Configure vSAN ESA
Deploy vCenter
Update Storage Policies
Deploy SDDC Manager, NSX, Fleet Manager, Automation, etc.

Summary

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. Related on vDan: Holodeck 9.0.2 stuck at Install VcfInstallerBundles, VCF 9 upgrade: vRNI SSL thumbprint in SDDC Manager and vSphere editions comparison: VVF vs VCF 9.1.
All trademarks belong to their respective owners.