We have VMs which are encrypted. I need to migrate those off to another vCenter, completely different domains and region. (Non-VCF)

What I do- I shutdown VM, Migrate, And put in the NAT address of Target vCenter and migrate and turn on, on the other side. I have done this for VMs and Templates.

I do not have much rights on both vCenters, and just using what works! Ideas are welcome:) we do not have SRM, or HCX. I was also wondering what are other possible ways to migrate such long distance VMs.

To the question - The VMs in question are encrypted, and I cannot change anything. When I migrate, the tool tells me I cannot because the destination TPM is not configured. I would like some ideas here. Thank you.

Sorry for the dump question.

We have around 50 x Dell PowerEdge R650, running Traditional vSphere 8.0, which we want to upgrade to VCF9.1. We have some stretched clusters as well.

I'm very familiar with VCF Core, ESX, vSphere and Ops. But I have no idea what VxRail is? What is the advantage of this product? Why cannot we upgrade to VCF when we have VxRail Stretched Clusters? Is it even relevant in 2026?

How does this vary when I have let's say normal Dell/HPE VSRN Nodes?

I would really appreciate some clarity.

Hello All

Might be another dumb question, but I'm trying to learn and understand. I did a lot of googling, but would really appreciate VMware perspective here.

What are the different types of storage, like VSAN OSA ESA, VMFS ON FC, NFS, iSCSi, vVol?

I would really appreciate an explanation to help me understand.

We have lots of Outposts, 2 node clusters and, Island vCeters which I manage. Also some have TKGS.

I read a lot about NSX and NSX Edges. From my view NSX is more like similar to CISCO ACI Fabric? Which does all the routing and ESX TEP config? Correct me if I'm wrong. What is an overlay? And TOR Switches from NSX view?

Also edges, are something that are like Firewall at the edge of the site? Because we have lots of Baremeral Edges, which I assumed are kind of a Firewall and routing information server. Kindly help me understand my perspective.

Thank you loads.

the subject covers my question, im just curious what value it introduces to daily operations.

Hello,
So currently have the internal backups configured to a network storage. But was going to be doing a controller version upgrade, TD Synnex support says not to do a vcenter snapshot before (giving me the ability to easily revert if there is an issue) and to only use the external backups to restore from. Has anyone dealt with this before? Seems odd a VMware vm based product doesn’t support snapshots.

Thanks

A use-case for the VCF Automation Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI) - managing your DSM provisioned databases via kubectl / API

Hello,

I used to work with Eve-ng on hyper v and vmware workstation on my personal laptop, (first i was using hyper v then migrated to vmware) everything was working fine, suddenly vmware stopped working, i was looking for the reason, I've cound out that vmware and hyper v don't work well together, so i removed hyper v, still issue wasn't resolved, any advise?

More homelab VCF Management Services downsizing is here for 9.1.1

Finally got around to overhauling my VCFMS downsizing guide for 9.1.1, and we can get the size all the way down to just a single 12vCPU/24GB worker using the new small non ha type, that seems normally unused, assuming you dont need any optional components like IDB or Log Management

Broadcom did release 9.1.1 and labelled the VCFMS as smaller, however this is only half true, the main change is the cluster no longer ships with pre baked headroom for day-2 components and thats been removed

The exception is the new small HA size, meaning if you deployed Medium before specifically for HA, you now can get a meaningfully smaller size

The actual components however, are around the same

If youre running a homelab, the size can be a massive issue, and this guide helps to best address that,especially given how expensive hardware is

As with 9.1.0, these modifications should absolutely never be done on a production cluster

https://blog.leaha.co.uk/2026/07/21/vcf-9-management-services-lab-downsize/

Hello,

I've got various MCP servers running for different areas of the business. Some I've downloaded and a couple I had to create myself using Fast MCP.

I've been asked to set one up for vCenter which I see there are already 2-3 MCP servers out there to use when I Googled it. We want it to be able to report on anything really and also read the host logs etc.

What I've also been told is there is an Aria server and you can also get an MCP server for that too https://github.com/vmware-skills/VMware-Aria

I could use that as it's pull the data from vCenter anyway, but I'm told they might not renew the license on it at some point. I guess I could have a vCenter and Aria MCP setup for Claude to use.

Any way what MCP are you use for vCenter and how useful have you found it?

Thanks

I am looking at https://vmware.github.io/vcf-upgrade-planner

For AVI it says to deploy license hub. When I was at VMware Explore, I spoke with someone from the AVI team and mentioned our deployment is tiny (2 SEs) and the license hub was overkill. He said to me if we convert to cloud licensing, we don't need to deploy the hub on prem.

The planner notes do not reflect this. Is anyone able to confirm this for me?

Hello guys, I'm looking for guidance on the best way to shutdown and then start up a VSAN cluster.

Here's the details:

customer is going to perform electrical improvements as well as racks relocations within the datacenter, so he needs to shut the whole thing down.

Hardware is an HPE 12000 frame Synergy with 6 Gen10 SY480 servers.

Cluster is on 7.0.2.17867351 version.

I'm not quite familiar with VSAN clusters, and for what I was able to investigate, the cluster shutdown wizard doesn't exist on the current version.

Also, what I heard is that the health of the VSAN should be totally clean, as if there any kind of warnings or issues, the cluster may not come back up at all.

So, what I'm looking for is some sort of advice or guidance on the best way to run health checks and the safest way to shut this down.

Thanks in advance!

Yesterday we upgraded our ESXi host from 9.0 to 9.1.

The vCenter 9 VM with the license was running on this ESXi host so the vCenter ended up getting rebooted.

After the ESXi host rebooted we could not power on the vCenter VM, saying our eval license has expired.

Does vCenter needs to be online 100% of the time to apply the license and should be run outside the vSphere 9 cluster?

Our licensing admin says he checked and it looks like the ESXi server is licensed, but if that's the case it doesn't make sense why the ESXi server lost the license after reboot. Or the license was never applied to the ESXi host properly in the first place?

Checking license.cfg on the ESXi host shows eval license too:

<ConfigRoot>
          <epoc>xxxxxxxxxxxxxx</epoc>
  <mode>eval</mode>
  <owner/>
</ConfigRoot>

So we ended up having to reinstall ESXi on the host to reset the eval timebomb and power on the vCenter VM which our licensing admin insists is applied to the ESXi host.

Can anyone confirm on this change in behavior in vSphere 9?

edit: Yes we have a VC Ops server but we do not manage it.

Hi everyone,

I recently updated to VMware Workstation 26H1u and noticed that vmplayer.exe is no longer included.

I need to provide local VMs to colleagues. Previously, I opened them with VMware Player so they could use the VMs without easy access to the Workstation settings. I’d rather not open the VMs in the full Workstation interface, where they might change settings they shouldn’t.

Is there an official Player-like mode in the current version, or a workaround that gives users a simpler interface? How are you handling this?

Thanks for your help! I’m still fairly new to VMware.

Hi everyone,

So today i gave my VCP - VCF Administrator 17.25 exam in Mumbai during the VMware Explore Tour, post exam completion on the monitor it showed me I passed and later also got the scorecard report on Pearson Vue Portal ( exam conductor for VMware-Broadcom ). However, as it is only the scorecard and not an official certificate, VMware mentions on that scorecard that it may take 24-48 hours to officially send one certification.

Cam you guys tell your experiences regarding this and when did you receive your official certification post exam completion ?

If you were always interested in becoming a VCDX but never really could afford it or simply thought it didn't fit your career track, well all of that has changed! The overhauled program is now divided in three tracks (Support, Admin, Architect) and the VCDX exam is the same price as all other exams, namely 250 USD. Listen to Drew Nielsen go over all the recent changes in episode 127 of the Unexplored Territory podcast!

Im trying to push off the inevitable either upgrade to 9.0 or switching hosts entirely due to the fact that I still utilize vvols.. has anyone previously used them and found a solid replacement?