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.

Start with the prerequisites View the repo

The flow

The planning flow, in order

Prerequisites

Environment gate: hardware, network, AD, DNS, NTP, CA. Fix reds before anything else.

Network / DNS Plan

One page, one meeting: VLANs, subnets, BGP, DNS, NTP, AD, certificates.

Intake

Role-based questionnaire, grouped by who owns each answer.

Sizing & Fit Check

Interactive calculator: size the management fleet, check whether your hosts fit at N-1, and export or share the result.

Multi-AZ Prep

Extra prep for stretched vSAN: witness, latency budgets, capacity.

Day-2 Deployments

Fleet components deployed after bring-up: VCF Automation, Ops, and their network placement (Shared / Dedicated / NSX Overlay / VLAN Segment).

Deployment Plan

An agile work breakdown (epics, stories, tasks); build your deployment scope and export it to Markdown or a backlog CSV.

Once you're building

Interactive tools

Sizing Calculator

Size the management fleet and check whether your hosts fit at N-1; export or share the result.

Deployment Plan Export

Build your deployment scope (connectivity, storage, stretch, Supervisor, Automation model, Day-2) and export a backlog.

Deployment Tracker

The exported plan as a checklist, with per-epic progress and a save/load progress file.

Test Plan

Scope-driven verification cases in phases TP-0 through TP-6, with result tracking and report/CSV/runbook export.

VCF 9.1 Version Overview

Auto-updating latest version and build per component, refreshed weekly from Broadcom.

Build guides

Reference: per-component build guides

Firewall & Ports

Deployment-critical firewall flows by zone, the 9.1 port gotchas, and links to the authoritative Ports & Protocols tools.

Backup Target

Build guide for the SFTP backup target every management component backs up to — building it, verifying it, and the field-notes gotchas.

Binary Depot

The offline depot and VCF Download Tool — build, feed, and connect the depot the platform installs and patches from.

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.

ESX Coredump

Build guide for the ESXi network Dump Collector: enable the service on vCenter, point every host at it, verify.

SSO Configuration

Configure fleet SSO via the VCF Identity Broker: the identity provider, per-product federation, role mapping, and verification.

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.

Avi Load Balancer

Deploy Avi Load Balancer from VCF Operations: the wizard, first-login controller setup, and the licensing chain.

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.

Remove 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.

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.

vDefend 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.

Workbook Mapping

Intake answers mapped to workbook sheet and field label.