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The Small
Human Cloud
Blog articles, news and useful information on VMware Cloud Foundation, automation and PowerShell — all from the home lab, where everything gets broken and rebuilt first.
- Blog posts
- 78
- vExpert since
- 2020
- In IT since
- 2008
- Days since I broke the lab
- 16
Deploying VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) 9.1 in a Lab
Guest post · James Tiffany
When it comes to installing your VVF environment you have two options available. The first, and most common, is to use the VCF Installer. Don't let the name faze you, the same installer that deploys VCF will also deploy VVF for you. The great thing about doing it this way is the level of automation you get, this process will deploy vCenter, VCFMS, VCF Operations and the License server...
Installing and Activating VMware Intelligent Assist in VCF Operations
So last week during VMware Explore in Las Vegas, a new feature was announced, VMware Intelligent Assist!
Latest News from the Web
VMware Cloud on AWS is moving to 9.1 in 2027, and both Packer plugins get an update
- Keep the Brotli workaround on SDDC Manager, and finish the ESX logging fix this week. VMSA-2026-0008.1 still lists every SDDC Manager fix as "Patch pending", so KB 460732 on 9.1.1 or KB 460734 on 9.0.x, 9.1.0 and 5.2.x is what protects you. BleepingComputer reports a US federal deadline of 10 November for the underlying Brotli flaw, and Security Affairs reports 11 November for the ESX logging flaw CVE-2026-41709, whose fixed builds are in the VMSA-2026-0006 matrix.
- Keep the vsphere provider pinned to ~> 2.17 if Terraform manages your Supervisor namespaces. 2.18.0 is still marked as not released in the CHANGELOG, but the vsphere_namespace work keeps growing: on 3 November #2796 split access into user and group and renamed vm_reservation to vm_class_reservation, #2795 added import support, and #2797 now creates the namespace before applying VM class reservations. The released storage_policies attribute is still being replaced by storage_policy blocks, so plan that migration before you lift the pin.
- The new Packer plugins are safe, low-drama bumps for your template pipelines. packer-plugin-vsphere 2.5.1 and packer-plugin-vmware 2.1.7 list no breaking changes: one logging fix, dependency updates (govmomi 0.56.2 in the vsphere plugin, Go 1.26.10 in the vmware one) and new docs on vsphere-clone flags. If you pin versions in required_plugins, it's a good moment to move up and rebuild one template to check.
- Security No new VMSA
- Releases & KBs All quiet
- Terraform & Packer Three releases
- Next deadline 10 Nov
Code Projects
VMware Explore 2024 Hackathon Winning team
Project and code from the Las Vegas hackathon at VMware Explore 2024.
Simplify VCF Deployment & Operations with Terraform
Session code with examples for deploying VCF and common post-bring-up tasks.
Automating VCF Day 1 Operations
Session code covering Day 1 actions via the API and PowerVCF.
Presentations
Every slide deck and demo from the events I've been lucky enough to present at.