Paul Bryant Scenario The VCF 9.1 upgrade path has been selected. The planning tool has been reviewed. The target version is understood. The team has a maintenance window on the calendar. That does not mean the environment is ready. A VCF 9.1 upgrade runbook needs to prove more than task order. It needs to prove that the … Explore: Building a VCF 9.1 Upgrade Runbook: Testing, Fallback,…
Enterprise AI is moving from experimentation into production design. That shift changes the conversation. The question is no longer, “Can we run a model on-prem?” The better question is, “Can we operate private AI as a secure, governed, scalable platform inside the enterprise?” That distinction matters because private AI is not just about GPU access. … Explore: Private AI Is Not a GPU Purchase: Comparing…
Introduction Enterprise AI teams eventually reach the same uncomfortable question: what should the agent remember? That question sounds simple until it touches real systems. A support agent may need to remember a customer preference, a recent escalation, a policy exception, and the current conversation state. A platform engineering agent may need to remember approved deployment … Explore: Agent Memory Is Architecture, Not a Feature
Enterprise AI teams are learning a hard lesson: agents do not behave like human users. A human analyst may ask a few questions, inspect a dashboard, and refine a query. An AI agent may generate dozens or hundreds of intermediate queries, inspect schemas, test assumptions, call tools, create temporary state, retry failed paths, and coordinate … Explore: Agentic Data Systems: Why AI Agents Need More…
Most enterprise AI conversations still start in the wrong place. Teams compare model benchmarks, argue over context windows, test one vendor against another, and treat the model as if it is the architecture. That might be enough for a demo. It is not enough for a production system that has to retrieve governed data, enforce … Explore: Compound AI Systems Are the Enterprise Architecture Shift…
The practical controls that reduce context, model calls, loops, and unit cost while preserving task quality. GenAI prototypes rarely fail a cost review because of one expensive prompt. They fail when that prompt becomes a workflow. A production agent may add system instructions, conversation history, memory, retrieved documents, tool definitions, tool results, reasoning, retries, validation … Explore: How to Cut GenAI and Agent Token Spend…
Build numbers are easy to treat as trivia until they become the deciding factor in a support case, security review, failed upgrade, or lifecycle audit. Most teams know whether they are running “vSphere 8” or “vSphere 9.” Fewer teams can quickly answer the more useful operational question: Which exact vCenter and ESX/ESXi builds are running … Explore: VMware vSphere Build Numbers in 2026: An Operational…
TL;DR A VCF 9.1 upgrade should not be treated like a normal maintenance window where each team updates its component, checks a dashboard, and leaves. The sequence matters. The ownership model matters. The readiness evidence matters. For VCF 9.1, VCF Operations is not a side task after the platform upgrade. Existing Aria Operations instances must … Explore: The VCF 9.1 Upgrade Is an Operating Model…
Private AI is not just a question of where to place GPUs. That is where the conversation often begins, but it is not where the real architecture work lives. The harder problem is deciding how private AI will be operated, governed, secured, monitored, scaled, and recovered once it moves beyond the proof of concept stage. … Explore: VCF 9.1 for Private AI: When the Private…
Human approval sounds simple until the agent is allowed to do something real. It is easy to put a button in front of an action and call it “human-in-the-loop.” Approve. Reject. Continue. Stop. That may be enough for a demo. It is not enough for an enterprise agent that can modify a ticket, send a … Explore: Human-in-the-Loop Is Not a Button: Designing Approval Paths…
TL;DR VCF 9.1 changes the upgrade conversation because the management layer is no longer just a collection of adjacent appliances. VCF Operations, VCF Automation, VCF Management Services, license services, software depot, identity, logging, and lifecycle workflows become part of a more unified private cloud operating model. That means the VCF 5.2.x to 9.1 upgrade should … Explore: VCF 9.1 Management Services and Aria: Turning the…
TL;DR The VCF 5.2.x to 9.1 upgrade is not just a component upgrade. It changes how teams should think about ownership. In VCF 5.2.x, many operational responsibilities were still organized around product lanes and appliances: SDDC Manager, Aria Operations, Aria Suite Lifecycle, Aria Automation, Log Insight, Identity Manager, vCenter, NSX, and ESXi. VCF 9.1 pushes … Explore: VCF 5.2.x to 9.1: The Fleet vs Instance…
The first step in modernizing VCF Operations dashboards is changing the entry point from tools to services. The next step is harder. You have to decide what “healthy” actually means. That is where private cloud SLOs become useful. Not because infrastructure teams need to copy every SRE practice from application engineering, but because VCF operations … Explore: Designing Private Cloud SLOs in VCF Operations: Fleet…
Quick answer: prove readiness before generating the path An upgrade path becomes actionable only when the inputs, owners, recovery boundaries, and acceptance checks are agreed. Use this review to expose unresolved decisions before the planner session. Jump to ownership, DNS readiness, recovery boundaries, scoped inventory export, or the validation checklist. Broadcom’s VCF Upgrade Planner is … Explore: The VCF Upgrade Readiness Review: Decisions Before You…
Amazon Elastic VMware Service is not automatically a cloud strategy. Sometimes it is a landing zone. Sometimes it is a disaster recovery target. Sometimes it is a practical way to avoid a data center deadline. Sometimes it is a temporary bridge while application teams decide what to modernize. And sometimes it is just a cloud … Explore: Amazon EVS vs Private VCF: Cloud Escape Hatch…
Amazon Elastic VMware Service is easy to describe incorrectly. The shallow description is “VMware on AWS.” That is directionally true, but it misses the operational point. Amazon EVS is not just a place to run virtual machines. It is a way to place a VMware Cloud Foundation environment inside an AWS operating boundary, with Amazon … Explore: Amazon EVS as a VMware Cloud Landing Zone:…
VCF Private AI Services networking looks like an installer choice until you follow the consequences downstream. At first glance, the decision appears simple: deploy the vSphere Supervisor with traditional VDS networking and Foundation Load Balancer, or deploy it with VCF Networking using VPCs. Both can support Private AI Services. Both can get a Supervisor online. … Explore: VCF Private AI Services Networking: VDS + Foundation…
Introduction The first article in this series focused on multicloud control-plane sprawl. Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and VMware Cloud Foundation each bring their own identity model, policy engine, network architecture, observability stack, automation surface, and lifecycle model. That is already enough to create governance fragmentation. AI agents add another layer. An agent is not just … Explore: AI Agents Are the New Control Plane: Governing…
AI placement decisions become more useful when they move from opinion to architecture criteria. The first article in this series focused on the core inputs: data gravity, latency, sovereignty, and cost. Those inputs explain why some AI workloads belong in managed cloud services, some belong close to local infrastructure, and some need a private AI … Explore: Azure AI, Azure Local, and vCF Private AI:…
TL;DR Multicloud is no longer just a workload placement problem. The harder problem is control-plane sprawl. Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, and VMware Cloud Foundation each bring their own identity model, policy engine, hierarchy, observability stack, network control plane, automation surface, and operational lifecycle. Those native control planes are useful. They become dangerous when each platform … Explore: Multi-Cloud Is Becoming Multi-Control-Plane: How to Avoid Governance…
