Unexplored Territory

Recently I realized I hadn't had Bob Plankers on the show yet, so it was time to get him to join the show and talk all things security.

Bob goes over all the various features we introduced related to security in VCF 9.1, and also gives a quick overview of what we've had available in VCF and vSphere for decades now.

All the topics and links discussed can be found here:
https://github.com/vmware/vcf-security-and-compliance-guidelines
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/06/confidential-computing-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/05/security-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/platform-security-vcf-9-1/

Broadcom just announced VCF 9.1, so it was time to get an expert on the show to talk us through the enhancements that will be coming for vSAN specifically. As always, Pete Koehler shared all the facts and figures of the release. He discusses Global Dedupe, Native S3 Object Storage, Ransomware Protection and Recovery and much more!
vSAN 9.1 announcement
vSAN Compression and Global Dedupe in VCF 9.1
Cyber Recovery Ready Nodes!
vSAN Auto-RAID

Arvind is back to provide an update on all things Memory Tiering. The interest in Memory Tiering is high due to insane memory prices and supply chain issues. Arvind goes over the basics of memory tiering and provide an insight into what to expect in the upcoming release of VCF/vSphere when it comes to Memory Tiering!

Some of the items discussed:
Performance whitepaper here: https://www.vmware.com/docs/memtier-vcf9-perf

Memory tiering doc's which describes how to disable it on a VM: https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vsphere/vsphere/9-0/how-do-i-activate-memory-tiering-in-vsphere-.html

Many different blogs, and an assessment script by Dave Morera: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/vcf-advanced-memory-tiering/

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/