Hybrid Cloud · VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1
Plan the VCF 9 build before you open the workbook.
The official Broadcom Planning and Preparation Workbook has hundreds of fields across nine technical sheets. Opened cold, it produces gaps, wrong VLANs, and weeks of back-and-forth. This guide flips the order: lock the network and DNS plan first, run a role-based intake, then fill the workbook last, when it is mechanical.
The flow
The planning flow, in order
Prerequisites
Environment gate: hardware, network, AD, DNS, NTP, CA. Fix reds before anything else.
OpenNetwork / DNS Plan
One page, one meeting: VLANs, subnets, BGP, DNS, NTP, AD, certificates.
OpenIntake
Role-based questionnaire, grouped by who owns each answer.
OpenSizing & Fit Check
Interactive calculator: size the management fleet, check whether your hosts fit at N-1, and export or share the result.
OpenMulti-AZ Prep
Extra prep for stretched vSAN: witness, latency budgets, capacity.
OpenDay-2 Deployments
Fleet components deployed after bring-up: VCF Automation, Ops, and their network placement (Shared / Dedicated / NSX Overlay / VLAN Segment).
OpenDeployment Plan
An agile work breakdown (epics, stories, tasks); build your deployment scope and export it to Markdown or a backlog CSV.
OpenOnce you're building
Interactive tools
Sizing Calculator
Size the VCF or VVF management footprint, check whether your hosts fit at N-1, and count licence cores and vSAN TiB; export or share the result.
OpenDeployment Plan Export
Build your deployment scope (connectivity, storage, stretch, Supervisor, Automation model, Day-2) and export a backlog.
OpenDeployment Tracker
The exported plan as a checklist, with per-epic progress and a save/load progress file.
OpenTest Plan
Scope-driven verification cases in phases TP-0 through TP-6, with result tracking and report/CSV/runbook export.
OpenVCF 9.1 Version Overview
Auto-updating latest version and build per component, refreshed weekly from Broadcom.
OpenBuild guides
Reference: per-component build guides
Grouped by the part of the platform they build. Pick the band you're working on; within a band the guides are roughly in the order you'd tackle them.
Foundation services
Backup Target
Build guide for the SFTP backup target every management component backs up to — building it, verifying it, and the field-notes gotchas.
OpenBinary Depot
The offline depot and VCF Download Tool — build, feed, and connect the depot the platform installs and patches from.
OpenESX Coredump
Build guide for the ESXi network Dump Collector: enable the service on vCenter, point every host at it, verify.
OpenSSO Configuration
Configure fleet SSO via the VCF Identity Broker: the identity provider, per-product federation, role mapping, and verification.
OpenBuild & expand
Workload Domain Creation
Manual prep (network pool, commissioned hosts, DNS) vs the creation wizard/API: page-by-page walkthrough, plus the DomainCreationSpec JSON path for LACP or no-cluster domains.
OpenCluster Creation
Adding a cluster to an existing workload domain: network pool + commissioned hosts, then the vSphere Client Create SDDC Cluster wizard (or the API), including the 9.1.1+ vDS-reuse rules.
OpenCluster Expansion
Adding hosts to an existing cluster via the vSphere Client Add Unassigned Hosts wizard, and what it does (and does not) automate per storage type.
OpenStretch Execution
Manual steps vs the one-call stretch API: AZ2 hosts, witness, network pool, then the PATCH that does the rest — for management and workload domains.
OpenMemory Tiering
Use a local NVMe device as a second memory tier: is it a fit, picking and sizing the drive, keeping it out of vSAN, enabling it per cluster or host, mirroring, encryption, monitoring and failure behaviour.
OpenGPU Hosts
NVIDIA GPUs for vGPU or passthrough: picking the mode, the licences it pulls in, checking the card on both Broadcom's and NVIDIA's lists, the host driver in the vLCM image, and per-host GPU configuration.
OpenPrivate AI Foundation
Private AI Foundation above the GPU hosts, connected or on a dark site: NVIDIA licensing (DLS), VM classes, content libraries, the VCF Automation org, Harbor, the artifacts to stage, the Quickstart and Private AI Services.
OpenSingle-pNIC Builds
Management (or the whole host) on one fabric-redundant pNIC: three worked layouts with their API-only bring-up specs, validation snags, the HA warning, a fabric failover test, and matching later hosts.
OpenNetwork & security services
License Hub
Deploy License Hub for vDefend and Avi subscription licensing — both the 2.0 standalone OVA and 5.1.2 SSP Installer flows — and the post-deploy registration chain.
OpenAvi Load Balancer
Deploy Avi Load Balancer from VCF Operations: the wizard, first-login controller setup, and the licensing chain.
OpenvDefend SSP
Deploy the vDefend Security Services Platform from the SSP Installer and configure it first time: form factors and footprint, the deploy wizard, onboarding NSX Manager, and activating Security Intelligence / NDR / Malware Prevention.
OpenSupervisor & VKS
Supervisor
Enable a vSphere Supervisor on a workload domain: the pre-flight gate, the Centralized Transit Gateway, Avi, the content library, and the wizard screen by screen.
OpenSupervisor Image Registry
The runtime container-image supply chain for Supervisor / VKS: direct, proxy (Supervisor + TkgServiceConfiguration + the no-proxy list), and the fully air-gapped path (the VCF Software Depot OCI registry, imgpkg relocation, the depot image proxy).
OpenVCF Automation
VCFA Tenant Config
First-time VCF Automation tenant/org config from the Login Provider Manual setup: create a region, an external IP block, an external connection, and an organization with its Avi integration.
OpenSecuring VCFA
Hardening for an external-facing (Pattern 3) VCF Automation instance: the Transit Gateway firewall, the DFW exclusion-list sequence, IP-based portal locking, the Avi WAF policy, and the Avi management-plane Tier-1 firewall.
OpenDay-2 operations
Shutdown / Startup
The ordered fleet shutdown and startup runbook: the 11-step management sequence, the fleet-level VCF Operations rule, shared NSX, and the infrastructure VMs that go last.
OpenConfig Artifacts
Pull re-submittable spec JSON out of a built VCF 9.1 instance (bring-up spec, Fleet LCM components, Supervisor export, the NSX policy hierarchy), then sanitise, parameterise and validate it into reusable templates.
OpenRemove Components
Cleanly remove and reinstall optional Day-N fleet components — Log Management, Real-time Metrics, VON, Depot Service, Identity Broker, VCF Automation — via cleanup_component.py.
OpenLog Management Sources
Getting logs into Log Management on VCF and VVF 9.1: whether your platform can run it, the deploy, which sources send on their own and which need an agent, agent secrets, and the firewall flows.
OpenVVF / Standalone
VCF Ops VVF Deployment
No Fleet LCM in VVF/standalone to deploy VCF Operations for you: OVA-deploy each node by hand, run the setup wizard, enable HA, and deploy/register a Cloud Proxy and a License Server.
OpenVCF Ops VVF Post-Deploy Config
No Fleet LCM in VVF/standalone: the vCenter adapter (role, service account, permission), renaming a node hostname, service-account password expiry, and AD/LDAP authentication sources.
OpenReference data
Ops & Logs Planning
Companion to the official VCF Operations Sizing Estimator: what Log Management and Real-Time Metrics add to the services runtime (workers, IPs, VIPs), Cloud Proxies per site, a quick VCF Operations estimate, and where the estimator and TechDocs disagree.
OpenFirewall & Ports
Deployment-critical firewall flows by zone, the 9.1 port gotchas, and links to the authoritative Ports & Protocols tools.
OpenWorkbook Mapping
Intake answers mapped to workbook sheet and field label.
Open