Unexplored Territory

I sometimes get confused when people talk about VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Fleets, Instances, and Domains! So I decided to invite Gary Blake to the show to explain to us all the various constructs, how they relate to each other, and what you should take into consideration when you are designing a VCF-based infrastructure! You can find the links to some of the discussed articles and documents below.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 Latency Diagram
On-Prem VVD for Ransomware Recovery
VCF Design Guide

Recently, Frank published a series of blog posts on GPU resource management. I invited Frank to the show to explain why GPU resource management is different than CPU and memory management in vSphere. Frank goes over all the intricate details, and as always, dives deep into the various constructs involved. I highly recommend reading the articles which are part of the following series, and make sure to also check the tool Frank developed, as this helps visualizing the challenges you may face today, or potentially in the future!

https://frankdenneman.ai/ai-infrastructure/
https://frankdenneman.ai/understanding-ai-memory/
https://frankdenneman.ai/tools/

Recently there was a big announcement about the adoption of vSAN Storage Clusters by Audi. All the reasons for me to invite Kalyan back to the show. During this episode, Kalyan not only discusses what was announced specifically with Audi, but also goes over some of the recently introduced functionality like vSAN traffic seperation, vSphere only clusters support for stretched with vSAN Storage Clusters, and much more.
Some of the discussed papers and blogs:
Audi case study: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/03/27/audi-introduces-smart-manufacturing-with-vcf-edge/ 
Lower requirements for vSAN: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/11/14/driving-down-storage-costs-with-lower-hardware-requirements-for-vsan/

I've been on the Virtually Speaking podcast several times, so it was time to invite one of the hosts to the Unexplored Territory Podcast and discuss his favorite topic, hardware configurations, and the bill of materials!
John Nicholson goes over all the ins and outs of procuring new hardware and talks about ordering components for existing hardware. We discuss NICs, Switches, Ready Node configurations, Emulated Ready Node configurations, NVMe devices, and much more.
During the discussion, various blogs and videos were mentioned, make sure to check those as well!
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2023/07/26/expanded-hardware-compatibility-for-vsan-express-storage-architecture/
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/326476/what-you-can-and-cannot-change-in-a-vsan.html
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2023/07/27/yes-you-can-change-things-on-a-vsan-esa-readynode/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjen1ER8ASc
https://www.vmware.com/explore/video-library/video/6360757998112

A few episodes ago we had Yves Hertoghs on the show to discuss networking, so I decided it was also time to discuss security. As Chris McCain has been at the forefront of networking and security at VMware for over a decade, it only made sense to reach out and invite him to introduce vDefend!

Not only was Chris part of the Explore keynote, but he also delivered various excellent sessions on networking and security in the past couple of years, and I would highly encourage you to watch those as well!

Explore 2025 - Demystifying VMware vDefend Distributed Security Within VMware Cloud Foundation
Explore 2025 - Building Secure Private AI Deep Dive