Vcf

Recently I stumbled upon a limitation in VCF that isn’t very clearly documented, and while not an issue you would regularly come accross. It is an import limitation to be aware of if you plan to adjust your pNIC configuration of any VCF hosts post deployment/commisioning.

The Problem

We have a few customers who will not be able to commision their new hosts with the desired pNIC configuration due to current hardware availability. The availability of the pNICs due to global supply challenges has meant severe delays in availability.

On the 10th February VCF 4.4 was released, this was quite a significant milestone as it removed a few things from the equation and also provided more flexbility.

Firstly and arguably the big change.

vRealize Suite

vRealize Lifecycle Manager 8.6.2, upgrade and deployment of the vRealize Suite products is managed by vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. You can upgrade vRealize Suite products as new versions become available in your vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager will only allow upgrades to compatible and supported versions of vRealize Suite products. Specific vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations, vRealize Log Insight, and Workspace ONE Access versions will no longer be listed in the VMware Cloud Foundation BOM.

Being a Consultant within a VMware Principal Partner there are standards we need to meet and preferably exceed.

Master Services Competencies (MSCs) are VMware partner designations designed to recognize services-capable partners with delivery expertise and experience within a VMware solution area.

With that in mind I sat the VCF Specialist exam.

The Exam

The exam covers a broad spectrum of VMware technologies (vSphere, NSX-T, vSAN, Tanzu) I was apprehensive about it as there is an awful lot of material to cover that the exam expects you to have good knowledge of. You have 130 minutes to work through 72 question It is available as a remote-proctored exam, and requires a score of 300 or more to pass.

I have been working with VMware Cloud Foundation recently and while for the most part things went well there were occasions where challenges were encountered which made the delivery to the customer all the more trickier than expected.

This article is a list of observations and things to most definitely check or watch out for when delivering a VCF project.

We were working with VCF version 3.7.2 (yes I am aware 3.8 has arrived but that was too late for the delivery in this project)