Decision diagram illustrating Decision Model at a Glance for Amazon EVS vs Private VCF: Cloud Escape Hatch or Long-Term Platform?

Amazon EVS vs Private VCF: Cloud Escape Hatch or Long-Term Platform?

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…

Conceptual diagram illustrating Landing-Zone Model at a Glance for Amazon EVS as a VMware Cloud Landing Zone: What Changes Inside an AWS VPC.

Amazon EVS as a VMware Cloud Landing Zone: What Changes Inside an AWS VPC

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:…

Conceptual diagram illustrating Placement Model at a Glance for Azure AI, Azure Local, and vCF Private AI: A Practical Placement Comparison.

Azure AI, Azure Local, and vCF Private AI: A Practical Placement Comparison

TL;DR Compare Azure AI, Azure Local, and VCF Private AI against the workload’s data boundaries, latency, connectivity, governance, and operating model. Use the criteria and comparison tables to choose placement for each workload. Get new guides by email · Related reading: Private AI Is Not Model Hosting: A Reference Architecture for Sovereignty, Identity, GPUs, and … Explore: Azure AI, Azure Local, and vCF Private AI:…

Workflow diagram illustrating Runbook Workflow at a Glance for Finding VM File Locks on ESXi: A Production-Safe Runbook Before You Kill Processes.

Finding VM File Locks on ESXi: A Production-Safe Runbook Before You Kill Processes

A virtual machine file lock issue rarely shows up at a convenient time. It usually appears when a VM refuses to power on, a consolidation task is stuck, a backup window has overrun, or vCenter and an ESXi host disagree about the VM’s state. That is exactly when bad habits get expensive. The temptation is … Explore: Finding VM File Locks on ESXi: A Production-Safe…

Workflow diagram illustrating PSOD Triage Workflow for ESXi PSOD Triage: Turning a Purple Screen into an Evidence-Driven Escalation.

ESXi PSOD Triage: Turning a Purple Screen into an Evidence-Driven Escalation

A purple screen on an ESXi host creates an immediate operational problem, but the bigger risk is what happens next. The first reaction is usually to get the host back online. That is understandable, especially when workloads are down, HA is recovering virtual machines, or a cluster is running hot after losing capacity. But if … Explore: ESXi PSOD Triage: Turning a Purple Screen into…

Workflow diagram illustrating The Runbook at a Glance for The vCenter Log Partition Runbook: Find Growth, Preserve Evidence, Restore Headroom.

The vCenter Log Partition Runbook: Find Growth, Preserve Evidence, Restore Headroom

A full /storage/log partition on a vCenter Server Appliance is not just a housekeeping problem. It is a management-plane risk. In a standalone vSphere environment, it can interrupt administration, log collection, patching, and service stability. In VMware Cloud Foundation, the blast radius is larger because vCenter is tied into SDDC Manager workflows, workload domain lifecycle … Explore: The vCenter Log Partition Runbook: Find Growth, Preserve…

Workflow diagram illustrating EAM Trust Flow at a Glance for EAM Certificate Trust Failures: Why vSphere Extensions Break After Certificate Changes.

EAM Certificate Trust Failures: Why vSphere Extensions Break After Certificate Changes

Certificate changes in vSphere environments rarely fail in only one place. The obvious place to look is the browser warning, the expired certificate alarm, or the service that recently had its Machine SSL certificate replaced. But in production VMware Cloud Foundation and vSphere environments, certificate changes can also break something less visible: the extension and … Explore: EAM Certificate Trust Failures: Why vSphere Extensions Break…

Workflow diagram illustrating Migration Flow at a Glance for Converting RDMs to VMDKs: A Practical Migration Pattern for Legacy Workloads.

Converting RDMs to VMDKs: A Practical Migration Pattern for Legacy Workloads

Raw Device Mappings tend to show up in the places where infrastructure history is still attached to the workload. A database server was moved from physical hardware years ago. A file server needed a very large LUN before VMDK limits improved. A clustered application depended on shared storage. A storage team wanted array-level tooling to … Explore: Converting RDMs to VMDKs: A Practical Migration Pattern…

Conceptual diagram illustrating The Mental Model: vCLS Is Cluster Plumbing, Not Workload for vCLS Retreat Mode: When to Use It, What It Breaks, and How to Exit Cleanly.

vCLS Retreat Mode: When to Use It, What It Breaks, and How to Exit Cleanly

Disable vCLS on a Cluster via Retreat Mode KB 316514 vSphere Cluster Services usually stay in the background until they get in the way of something operational. Most teams first notice vCLS when a cluster task is blocked, a warning appears after maintenance, or a handful of small system VMs show up and someone asks … Explore: vCLS Retreat Mode: When to Use It, What…

Workflow diagram illustrating DVS Upgrade Flow at a Glance for DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old Distributed Switches Move Forward.

DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old Distributed Switches Move Forward

A vSphere Distributed Switch upgrade can look deceptively simple in the vCenter UI. Select the switch, choose the target version, confirm the warning, and move on. That is not how it should be treated in a brownfield environment. The risk is not that a DVS upgrade is always dangerous. The risk is that old distributed … Explore: DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old…

Diagram illustrating Objective for Patching vCenter Through VAMI Without Turning It Into a Recovery Event.

Patching vCenter Through VAMI Without Turning It Into a Recovery Event

Patching vCenter should not feel dramatic. The workflow in the Appliance Management Interface is straightforward: log in to VAMI, check for updates, stage, install, validate. Broadcom KB 316584 documents that basic path for vCenter Server 7.x and 8.x, including two patching options: using a URL-based repository or mounting a patch ISO as a local CD-ROM … Explore: Patching vCenter Through VAMI Without Turning It Into…

Workflow diagram illustrating Triage Flow at a Glance for “No Healthy Upstream” Is Often a Certificate Problem.

vCenter “No Healthy Upstream”: Causes, Diagnosis, and Recovery

Quick answer: In vCenter, No Healthy Upstream means the vSphere Client front end cannot route the request to a healthy backend service. Broadcom describes it as an alternate HTTP 503 symptom, not a diagnosis. Common causes include stopped services, expired certificates, disk-space or memory pressure, session exhaustion, a changed /etc/hosts file, and Lookup Service problems. … Explore: vCenter “No Healthy Upstream”: Causes, Diagnosis, and Recovery

Diagram illustrating PDL and APD at a Glance for PDL vs APD: The Storage Failure Model Every vSphere Operator Needs.

PDL vs APD: The Storage Failure Model Every vSphere Operator Needs

Storage failures in vSphere are rarely just “storage is down.” That phrase may be accurate from the application owner’s point of view, but it is not precise enough for the operator who has to decide what happens next. A host that has lost all paths to a datastore behaves differently from a host that has … Explore: PDL vs APD: The Storage Failure Model Every…

Workflow diagram illustrating Workflow at a Glance for Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail.

Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail: Device Limits, Config Hygiene, and PowerCLI Prechecks

Large VM migrations usually fail at the worst possible time: late in the change window, after the task has already consumed hours of storage, network, and operator attention. When the error is something like “Invalid configuration for device ‘##’,” the first instinct is to look for a broken virtual NIC, a missing port group, an … Explore: Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail:…

Diagram illustrating Symptoms and Risk Signals for Using vCert Without Guesswork: A vCenter Certificate Recovery Runbook.

Using vCert Without Guesswork: A vCenter Certificate Recovery Runbook

vCenter certificate failures tend to show up at the worst possible time: during an upgrade precheck, after a maintenance window has already started, when services will not start cleanly, or when a certificate alarm has been ignored long enough to become someone else’s emergency. The mistake is treating certificate recovery as a button-click exercise. The … Explore: Using vCert Without Guesswork: A vCenter Certificate Recovery…

Diagram illustrating VMCA as a Trust Factory, Not Just a Certificate Store for The VMCA Reset Decision: When Regenerating vSphere Certificates Is the Right Move.

The VMCA Reset Decision: When Regenerating vSphere Certificates Is the Right Move

Certificates in vSphere are easy to underestimate until they become the reason vCenter will not authenticate, services will not start cleanly, NSX loses trust in its Compute Manager, or SDDC Manager stops interacting with the management domain the way it should. That is why a VMCA reset should not be treated as a generic “renew … Explore: The VMCA Reset Decision: When Regenerating vSphere Certificates…

Conceptual diagram illustrating The Safer Operating Model for From Fixcerts to vCert: A Safer vCenter Certificate Recovery Path.

From Fixcerts to vCert: A Safer vCenter Certificate Recovery Path

Quick answer: Fixcerts or vCert? Broadcom has deprecated the Fixcerts certificate-replacement script and directs operators to vCert. Identify the affected certificates and confirm your backup and rollback plan before remediation. The current vCert guidance says the tool is intended for use under Broadcom Global Support direction. Start with prerequisites and safety checks, then review post-recovery … Explore: From Fixcerts to vCert: A Safer vCenter Certificate…