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vCenter Server Services not Starting all Services after Physical Disk Issue

During some recent lab work I unexpectedly lost one of the NVME drives in my host which took out the VCF instance I was working in. After resolving the disk issue, I didn’t have a working vCenter so I checked to see what services were running I could see most were not! root@tshc-vc01 [ ~ ]# service-control --status Running: lwsmd observability vmafdd vmcad vmdird vmware-envoy vmware-envoy-hgw vmware-envoy-sidecar vmware-envoy-system-proxy vmware-postgres-archiver vmware-rhttpproxy vmware-vdtc vmware-vmon vmware-vpostgres vtsdb Stopped: applmgmt lookupsvc observability-vapi pschealth vc-ws1a-broker vlcm vmcam vmware-analytics vmware-certificateauthority vmware-certificatemanagement vmware-cis-license vmware-content-library vmware-eam vmware-hvc vmware-imagebuilder vmware-infraprofile vmware-netdumper vmware-perfcharts vmware-rbd-watchdog vmware-sca vmware-sps vmware-stsd vmware-topologysvc vmware-trustmanagement vmware-updatemgr vmware-vapi-endpoint vmware-vcha vmware-vpxd vmware-vpxd-svcs vmware-vsan-health vmware-vsm vsphere-ui vstats wcp After a bit of research I found this article.

  • vCenter
  • VCF
Sunday, January 18, 2026 | 1 minute Read
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VCF Operations for Logs Upgrade Fails Not Enough Disk Space /tmp

This is just a quick blog to cover an issue I encountered in the lab when I was running through some upgrades from 9.0 to 9.0.1 for a VVF (VMware vSphere Foundation) environment. Like many people the lab environment I use is self funded so fairly small and resources are scarce so most of the deployments are done at the smallest size as we are demonstrating functions not performance or high availability. When I was deploying the lab I chose to deploy VCF Operations for Logs as an Extra Small Appliance and all went well. Where I hit the issue was when I came to do an upgrade from 9.0 to 9.0.1 and as I went through the process I suddenly hit disk space issues trying to upload the PAK file. Now the Logs deployment had only happened three hours before and there were only three hosts and three VMs in the environment at this point, there was no way they could have been generating enough logs to fill the appliance.

  • VVF
  • Logs
  • VCF Operations Logs
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 2 minutes Read
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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) 9.0 Greenfield Deployment

Welcome back, In the previous article I covered setting up the nested hosts to prepare for the green field deployment of VMware vSphere Foundation 9.0. This blog will cover the deployment using the VCF Installer appliance. Update - At this point I will not be covering the deployment of the VCF Installer appliance or the setting up of the repository depot. I will update this article at a later date to include these. As this lab environment is already running VCF I piggy backed onto the existing depot as I was short on time. There are a large number of blogs out there already that cover the VCF Installer deployment. The same appliance is used for VCF and VVF deployments so you could use one of those until I have time to update. You can also host the files on the installer itself if you did not want to create the depot - Using the VMware Download Tool. I wont be able to cover this configuration as I don’t have access to tokens to enable the download.

  • VVF
  • vSphere
  • VCF Operations
  • VCF Logs
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 10 minutes Read
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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) 9.0 Upgrade to 9.0.1

So if you have been following the previous blogs, or just jumped here we are now going to cover the upgrade of a VVF 9.0 environment to 9.0.1. What we cover here will allow you to upgrade to future versions as well and will show you the differences you will see between a VCF driven upgrade and the steps required in VVF. When Version 9 was released it was detailed that VMware was moving away from lots of different products all being released on their own cycles making planning an entire infrastructure upgrade a difficult task. When a new version comes out it will be for the whole stack, so when 9.0.1 was released in September 2025 it included updates for all the products supported in VVF. To carry out the update the products will need to be updated in the following order.

  • VVF
  • vSphere
  • VCF Operations
  • VCF Logs
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 5 minutes Read
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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Basic Lab Configuration

Lab Configuration So the first part of this series is to quickly cover the lab environment. Now the majority of people who are seasoned lab users will probably skip this as all the information is available in many other already published series. But those who are new or following this to create their own environments for the first time might find the information useful. As previously mentioned I was rushing to create and document the environment and I missed a number of key configuration items that caused the deployments to fail, costing me time. The biggest issue I had was the use of snapshots and remembering what these included and did not when I had to roll back, the amount of times I made a change, forgot to document it and when I reverted caused me the same issue again was frustrating but it certainly blew the cobwebs away and got me back into the labs with a bang. Once you have done this a couple of times it all becomes second nature especially when you remember to document it all and put proper notes in the snaps.

  • ESX
  • vSphere
  • VVF
  • Lab
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 5 minutes Read
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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Day 2 Operations

Adding VCF Operations for Logs 9.0 Unlike in VMware Cloud Foundation VCF Operations for Logs is a manual deployment as there is no Fleet Management functionality. This is also the same for patching which will be covered in the next blog in the series. So to deploy VCF Operations for Logs, you first need to download the OVF file from the Broadcom Support Portal. Once downloaded open vCenter Right click the cluster or a Host and from the drop down menu choose Deploy OVF Template

  • VCF Logs
  • VCF Operations for Logs
  • Add Remove Host
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 6 minutes Read
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VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) Introduction

Its been a while since I have had time to complete the many blogs that I have started but then not completed. I have been snowed under with customers and training to attempt Everest Base Camp this year. But it was a series of conversations with one of my customers that kicked me into gear to create the series that I am writing now. You would have been living under a rock if you did not know about the guiding hand we supply in helping customers with on their journey towards VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) in version 9. This will be great for most customers, but some will still have a requirement to either stay on, or have pockets of VVF (VMware vSphere Foundation) in their environments. Now if you look out there the web is overflowing with articles on VCF, but there are almost none on VVF. The documentation that is available with the version 9 is the most detailed and comprehensive I have seen in all my years working with VMware. However there is now no longer a separate branch for VVF compared to VVF and they are now all part of the same 800 plus page set of documents, this can make it difficult and confusing to pull out VVF specific information.

  • VVF
  • vSphere
Monday, January 12, 2026 | 3 minutes Read
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Certificate Auto Renewal VMware Cloud Foundation 9

Certificate management is a critical aspect of maintaining IT infrastructure. Traditionally, it can be a time-consuming process involving multiple requests, team handoffs, and access to different endpoints and procedures. In VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9, a new feature makes this job much easier: automatic certificate renewal. This enhancement can significantly reduce the time and effort required to manage certificate lifecycles. Here is the official techdocs article on the configuration and also details the auto renewal period; 60days before expiry.

  • VCF
  • Certificates
Monday, August 25, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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Preparing Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager for VCF 9

With the new announcement of VCF 9, I like many others, was ready and eager to upgrade my lab. As part of this there is a requirement to apply a patch to Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager to enable you to upgrade VCF Operations from 8.18 to 9.0 and install the new VCF Operations Fleet Management appliance. I thought I would share this process with you. Here are the Release Notes. Firstly, download the patch from the Broadcom Support Portal here.

  • VCF
  • Aria
  • VCF Ops
Thursday, June 19, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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Unable to Select Newer VCF Component Versions After Download Token Changes and Upgrading VCF 4.x to 5.x

Recently, there was a change to how SDDC Manager is configured to download bundles. This was previously done via the Depot Settings section in the SDDC Manager UI, but is now managed via a customer specific download token and a configuration file change. Getting the token is covered already via this KB390098. The article covers off how to get the token but also offers links to a manual and scripted approach for making the configuration file changes.

  • VCF
  • Certification
Tuesday, May 27, 2025 | 2 minutes Read
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