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!
What is VMware Intelligent Assist?
The product’s own description sums it up well:
“VMware Intelligent Assist is an AI-powered diagnostic companion that transforms how IT teams troubleshoot and manage their infrastructure. By autonomously analysing your environment, it provides an intuitive, conversational experience that instantly cuts through complexity to pinpoint root causes and recommend actionable solutions.”
In the UI it presents as an intuitive chat agent bolted onto VCF Operations that can query your inventory and findings on your behalf, rather than pasting log snippets into a generic LLM.
So lets look at how we can enable and make use of this new feature.
Install the extension
Everything starts in VCF operations Extensions → Extensions Management. Alongside Advanced Configuration, Content Builder, and Platform Observability, VMware Intelligent Assist shows up as an available extension.
Click Install, and after a few moments VCF Operations confirms the install and asks for a page reload before the extension becomes active.
Once the page reloads, the tile flips to Installed, and a new VMware Intelligent Assist entry appears in the left-hand navigation.
Meet the prerequisites
Installed isn’t the same as usable. Opening the new VMware Intelligent Assist page lays out exactly what’s still missing before you can start using it:
- Activate Advanced Configuration — not activated yet
- Configure a Model in Advanced Configuration — not configured yet
Advanced Configuration is a separate extension, described as the “central hub for managing AI agents, LLM providers, agentic tools, and observability across the Agentic Operations platform.” It’s the piece that actually owns the LLM connection — VMware Intelligent Assist is a consumer of it, not a standalone AI integration.
Install Advanced Configuration
Back in Extensions Management, Advanced Configuration is sitting there as Available, same as VMware Intelligent Assist was a minute ago.
Install it the same way, and both extensions now show as Installed.
Enable Advanced Configuration’s services
Installing the extension doesn’t automatically turn its services on. The Advanced Configuration landing page spells out one more prerequisite of its own — Log Management, version 9.1.1 or later — before you can enable services. I already had this installed so I didn’t need to do anything on that front.
With Log Management already in place, clicking Enable Services kicks off a short wait while things come online.
Connect an LLM provider
Once services are up, the LLM Providers tab is where you’d expect it: empty, with VMware Intelligent Assist itself showing as Disabled until a provider is connected.
Clicking Add Provider opens a simple dialog — pick a provider, drop in an API key, and connect. I used Google Gemini for the lab as I am not able to make use of the other possilbe option, PAIF - Private AI Foundation.
As soon as the provider connects successfully, two things happen at once: the provider shows up as Healthy, and VMware Intelligent Assist flips from Disabled to Enabled.
Select a model
Having a healthy provider isn’t quite enough — VCF Operations still won’t pick a model for you. The Models tab lists every model exposed by the connected provider and flags that nothing is selected yet.
Hit Select on the model you want — I went with Gemini 3.8 Flash on the last page — and it’s immediately reflected as the selected model and provider that will be used globally by every agent that needs an LLM.
Ask it something
Head back to the VMware Intelligent Assist page and the chat interface is live, complete with a handful of suggested prompts to get started — things like “Show me all infrastructure issues,” “Summarize issues across vCenters,” and “Troubleshoot the most recent vMotion issues.”
As always, thanks for reading — any questions, comment on a post or drop me an email, I’m always happy to talk shop.