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Introducing the Tenant Onboarding Workflow Builder: Simulate VCF Automation with Zero YAML Anxiety

7/12/2025

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When it comes to scaling tenant-ready automation on VMware Cloud Foundation, every infrastructure team hits the same wall: onboarding new tenants is either too manual or too brittle. We built the Tenant Onboarding Workflow Builder to change that.

This drag-and-drop simulation tool lets you rapidly prototype and export tenant onboarding workflows—no PowerCLI experience or YAML syntax memorization required. Whether you're provisioning a namespace, configuring NSX segments, or triggering an ArgoCD sync, this tool helps you visualize the automation flow and export it into formats that plug directly into your GitOps pipelines.

This tool ties directly into the topics we’ve covered in the VCF Automation Blog Series, especially around:
  • GitOps-based lifecycle automation
  • Role-based access control for multitenant environments
  • DevSecOps-ready onboarding blueprints for your platform team

​Let’s walk through how it works—and how it can help you simplify tenant activation, reduce manual error, and enforce governance from day one.

VCF Automation Series:
  • This Is the Missing Piece in Your VCF 9.0 Automation Strategy: Red Hat Ansible
  • STOP Deploying VCF Wrong: Unlocking Tenant-Ready Workflows with GitOps & CI/CD
  • STOP! Your VCF Automation Is a Security Time Bomb (Unless You Do THIS)

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STOP! Your VCF Automation Is a Security Time Bomb (Unless You Do THIS)

7/5/2025

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Part 3 of our VCF 9.0 Automation Series
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The Guardrails of Automation

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 has redefined private cloud automation. With full-stack automation powered by Ansible and orchestrated through vRealize Orchestrator (vRO), and version-controlled deployments driven by GitOps and CI/CD pipelines, teams can build infrastructure faster than ever.
But automation without guardrails is a recipe for risk
Enter RBAC and policy enforcement.
This third and final installment in our automation series focuses on how to secure and govern multi-tenant environments in VCF 9.0 with role-based access control (RBAC) and layered identity management.

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STOP Deploying VCF Wrong: Unlocking Tenant-Ready Workflows with GitOps & CI/CD

7/1/2025

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Part 2 of the VCF Automation Series: Tenant-Ready Workflows at Scale

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Why GitOps for VCF Automation?

VCF 9.0 Automation gives us a powerful foundation for multi-tenant self-service infrastructure. But to operate like a true internal platform-as-a-service, we need:
  • Version control of blueprints and workflows
  • Consistent deployment across environments
  • Integrated approval and testing processes
This is where GitOps and CI/CD pipelines come in. By storing VCF Automation blueprints, Aria Orchestrator workflows, and even Ansible playbooks in Git—and connecting them to your CI/CD tooling—you bring repeatability, collaboration, and traceability into the heart of your private cloud.

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This Is the Missing Piece in Your VCF 9.0 Automation Strategy: Red Hat Ansible

6/24/2025

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​Part of the VCF Automation Series: Tenant-Ready Workflows at Scale
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VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 marks a major leap toward a true private cloud platform—with built-in multi-tenancy, automated provisioning, and extensible workflows via external Orchestrator instances. But there's still one critical gap many platform teams face:

What happens after the VM is provisioned?

"This critical gap often leads to manual toil, inconsistent configurations, and delays in application readiness."
That’s where Red Hat Ansible becomes the missing piece.
This post shows how to integrate Ansible with VCF 9.0 Automation to deliver:
  • Full-stack automation from VM to application
  • Tenant-scoped workflows via external vRO instances
  • Post-deployment actions like patching, agent installation, and OS hardening
  • GitOps-friendly, repeatable playbook execution
  • RBAC and policy enforcement across tenants
If you're building a cloud platform on VCF 9.0, this integration is not just nice-to-have—it's essential.

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Forgotten VMware Snapshots? Automate Detection and Alerting with PowerCLI

6/11/2025

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In any VMware environment, snapshots are powerful but risky tools. They're great for backups or quick rollback points during updates, but leaving them for too long can seriously degrade performance, consume excessive datastore space, and even cause backup failures.

Tools like RVTools give you visibility into your snapshots, but wouldn’t it be better if you could automate the process and be proactively alerted when snapshots become a problem?

​That’s exactly what we’ll do in this blog—let’s build a PowerCLI script that checks for old snapshots and alerts you automatically.

The Problem: Forgotten Snapshots

Snapshots are meant to be temporary. VMware recommends deleting them within 24–72 hours in most production environments. However, admins often forget to clean them up—especially in environments with multiple teams or large numbers of VMs.

Leaving snapshots too long can result in:
  • Slower VM performance
  • Datastores filling up unexpectedly
  • Failed backup jobs
  • Risky system state assumptions

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What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1: Learn the Key Enhancements and How to Use Them

5/29/2025

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Learning Objectives

  • Understand and explain the new features in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2.1.
  • Perform a Reduced Downtime Upgrade (RDU) for vCenter Server.
  • Differentiate between vLCM baseline and image-based cluster management.
  • Configure vSAN capacity-based licensing within the SDDC Manager UI.
  • Set up AI-ready infrastructure using the vSphere Client workflow.

​Overview: Why VCF 5.2.1 Matters

​VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1 brings a suite of enhancements aimed at making lifecycle management more efficient, improving flexibility in cluster upgrades, and preparing your infrastructure for AI and modern apps. If you're running a hybrid environment, or prepping for GPU-enabled workloads, this is a release you’ll want to master.

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Understanding the Basics of VMware vSAN

4/25/2024

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In the realm of virtualization and cloud computing, VMware vSAN stands out as a robust and innovative solution for storage management. As organizations increasingly rely on virtualized environments to power their IT infrastructure, understanding the basics of VMware vSAN becomes essential for IT professionals and businesses alike. In this blog post, we'll explore what VMware vSAN is, how it works, its key benefits and considerations, as well as its implementation and configuration options.

​What is VMware vSAN?

VMware vSAN uses a software-defined approach that creates shared storage for virtual machines. It virtualizes the local physical storage resources of ESXi hosts and turns them into pools of storage that can be divided and assigned to virtual machines and applications according to their quality-of-service requirements. vSAN is implemented directly in the ESXi hypervisor.

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What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1: Mastering Lifecycle Modernization, Licensing Flexibility, and AI-Ready Deployments

7/26/2023

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Learning Objectives

  • Explain the architectural and operational enhancements in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2.1.
  • Perform critical upgrade and lifecycle management tasks like Reduced Downtime Upgrades and in-place NSX patching.
  • Differentiate and deploy mixed vLCM clusters and assign vSAN capacity-based licenses.
  • Set up GPU-enabled hosts for Private AI infrastructure via the vSphere Client.
  • Centralize credential and certificate lifecycle management across your SDDC stack.

Introduction

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.1 is a feature-rich update focused on real-world usability improvements. Whether you're upgrading environments, setting up AI workloads, or simply trying to reduce downtime in production, VCF 5.2.1 is here to help you do more—with less manual effort.

Let’s dive deep into each major update with real scenarios, hands-on guidance, and lessons learned from the field.

1. Reduced Downtime Upgrade (RDU) for vCenter

What is it?

RDU introduces a new upgrade path for vCenter where the existing vCenter is replaced by a freshly deployed one, with settings and configuration migrated over.

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Maximizing Virtual Machine Performance: Best Practices and Tips

7/26/2023

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Virtual machines (VMs) play a crucial role in the modern IT infrastructure, serving as versatile, scalable, and cost-effective solutions for businesses and individual users alike. However, just like physical machines, VMs need optimization to perform at their peak. Below are some of the best practices and tips to maximize your virtual machine performance.

1. Allocate Appropriate System Resources

​The first step in optimizing your VMs is proper resource allocation. This includes CPU, memory, and storage. Overallocating can lead to wasted resources and underperformance. On the other hand, underallocation can throttle your VM's potential. Therefore, always ensure your VMs have enough resources to perform their tasks without hogging your system's overall capacity.

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Installing VMware vSphere 8

3/18/2023

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VMware vSphere 8 is the latest edition to the VMware vSphere family. As you already know, by consolidating physical servers and workloads onto a smaller number of physical hosts, vSphere can help reduce hardware costs, increase efficiency, and improve agility. In this blog, I'll cover the prerequisites for installing vSphere 8, discuss some of the benefits of using this platform, and walk through a high-level install. This is intended for beginners to VMware. 

Overview of vSphere 8 Features and Benefits


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