The VMware ecosystem has undergone some of its biggest transformations in recent years, and one of the most significant milestones is the Broadcom-backed release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 . This latest version introduces a modernized architecture that dramatically expands flexibility across both storage and networking layers—giving architects more freedom than ever to design environments that align with real-world operational and business requirements. On the storage front, VCF 9 removes the long-standing dependency on vSAN as the mandatory principal storage . Organizations can now deploy Management and Workload Domains using NFS or Fibre Channel (FC) in addition to vSAN HCI (ESA/OSA) . Supplemental storage options also expand, with support for iSCSI , NVMe , and vSAN Remote , enabling hybrid use cases and smoother brownfield integrations. Networking sees an equally impactful shift. VCF 9 introduces Edgeless Networking for overlay , eliminating the need to deploy NSX Edge No...

In IT infrastructure, support engineers handle a wide range of daily activities—maintaining, sustaining, and troubleshooting systems. At times, they also face complex bugs or advanced issues that require assistance from product support teams. In this scenario, we’re using VCF as the example product a tightly integrated solution composed of multiple components working together to deliver its capabilities. Let’s walk through a short story to understand the root cause of an issue and how it was resolved: A support engineer named Vivek was working on importing a vCenter instance into a VCF 9 environment . During this process, he encountered a challenging error within VCF Operations that he was unable to resolve on his own. Realizing he needed help, Vivek opened a support request with Broadcom. The support team asked him to provide the necessary log bundles for analysis. Vivek downloaded the requested logs locally and uploaded them to the Broadcom portal a task that took considerable tim...