#127 - Drew Nielsen introducing the new VCDX program!

I bumped into Drew Nielsen at Explore in Las Vegas and we briefly discussed the overhauled VCDX Program. Not only did the name change from VMware Certified Design Expert to VMware Certified Distinguished Expert, the whole program has been overhauled with job specific tracks for the various personas. Where the focus was on architects in the past, Broadcom now made the top tier certificationt track accessible for support engineers, administrators, and of course still for architects. Besides sharing the details of the renewed VCDX program, Drew also discusses what has changed for the VCAP exams. If you are interested in getting certified, this is a must listen! Oh, and before I forget, the price of the VCDX exam has been lowered to 250 USD from 995 (and 3000 USD before that).

I flew out to Las Vegas this week to present a few sessions at Explore 2026! I brought my mobile podcast recording kit for the first time and decided to record some clips with various people I ran into at the event. I hope you appreciate the conversations with folks like Alan Renouf, Pete Flecha, William Lam, Frank Denneman, and many more! Make sure to watch some of the recordings of the Explore sessions my guests hosted:Frank's Models in MinutesAlan and William's Tips and Tricks for running 9.1 in your homelabIwan's Full Stack TroubleshootingBrad's Full Stack EngineeringDuncan's Four Prod Ready VCF 9.1 Storage Capabilities Keith's From Gatekeeper to Enabler

I noticed a blog post about a new fling called VCF Inspector last week, so I had to invite the author Alan Renouf to the show to talk us through it. VCF Inspector, in my opinion, is one of those tools that will be very valuable for everyone working with VCF, but especially for consultants and people managing many different environments. Just listen to the episode, and download the tool via the link in the blog post!

For me personally, VMware Explore is the event of the year and a very exciting (and stressful) time. I asked Nikki Sherin from the Explore team to talk us through what we can expect at Explore 2026, and I also asked my good friends William Lam, Alan Renouf, and Pete Flecha to explain to us what excites them most about the event. It was a fantastic conversation and I am definitely looking forward to meeting up with everyone at the event again.My Favorite Sessions: ⁠https://event.vmware.com/my/widget/vmware/explore2026lv/1784640936449001Ii9L⁠Hackathon: https://blogs.vmware.com/code/2026/06/26/vmwarecode-hackathon-for-explore-las-vegas/Schedule Builder: https://event.vmware.com/flow/vmware/explore2026lv/content Living on the edge - https://event.vmware.com/flow/vmware/explore2026lv/content/page/catalog?tab.sessioncatalogtabs=1747347809815001igUo&search=CLOB1260LV

For this episode I invited Iwan Rahabok to talk us through the recent announcement of the 5th edition of the IT Ops Management Guidebook. As I mentioned during this episode, this isn't just a book, this is a Resource Kit!What changed? 1000+ pages, and 4 parts. Lots of additional content & corrections compared to the 4th edition 2 years ago.Deeper. More technical.Leveling up to support private cloud architect.A booklet written for higher up management chain.New troubleshooting flows. Done in DrawIO so you can tailor for your needsTwo brand new calculatorsVCF Ops vCommunity adapters. Built by OnurAn agentic AI webiste: https://isvara.io/ built by Samir. What does not change:Still free.Still editable. So you can customize to your own organisationDownload in the usual place: https://broadcom.ent.box.com/v/OpsYourWorld

I read a few articles the last couple of months on the topic of VCF Edge by Dhruv Tyagi , and with the 9.1 release there were a couple of interesting posts about Zero Touch Provisioning, so it was time to invite him to the podcast and explore what VCF Edge is all about. Of course we also touch on things like Zero Touch Provisioning and how it helps customers deploy and manage thousands of hosts across countless locations. A very unique solution for a very specific problem!Want to know more, these were some of the documents, blogs, and demos discussed during this episode:VCF Edge: VCF Edge Design LibraryVCF Edge Design Blueprint for ManufacturingVCF Edge Design Blueprint for DefenseZTP:Blog - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VMware Cloud Foundation Edge 9.1Demo Video - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VCF Edge 9.1Tech Docs for ZTP

With VCF 9.1 the name of VMware Live Recovery, or Site Recovery Manager, seems to have changed to VCF Protection and Recovery. In this episode Velina explains how this platform provides administrators the ability to recover workloads from different types of scenarios. Whether you deleted a VM (operational recovery), lost a whole datacenter (disaster recovery), or had a security breach and found data encrypted (ransomware recovery), VCF Protection and Recovery has an end-to-end solution for you!Discussed topics:Ransomware Recovery Demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFjSCyLP384Cyber resilience in 9.1 - https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/announcing-vcf-9-1-modern-private-cloud-built-for-efficiency-and-resilience/

VCF Native S3 Object Storage is a major feature that was announced with VCF 9.1. Pete Koehler introduced it in episode 118 and I wanted to explore what it is all about in this episode with Rakesh. Rakesh goes over what was announced with 9.1, what the timelines look like, discusses the use cases for the platform, and reveals what you can expect in the (near) future. All the topics and links discussed can be found here:https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/13/native-s3-compatible-object-storage-in-vmware-vsan-for-vcf-9-1/https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/announcing_vsan_in_vcf_9-1/Disclaimer: VCF Native S3 Object Storage has not been released yet, it has only been announced. As Rakesh has mentioned, the plan is to release it in a future patch release as a tech preview, followed by an "MVP" release after that. As always, there's no commitment to any timeline or delivery of any feature at this stage.

Recently I realized I hadn't had Bob Plankers on the show yet, so it was time to get him to join the show and talk all things security.Bob goes over all the various features we introduced related to security in VCF 9.1, and also gives a quick overview of what we've had available in VCF and vSphere for decades now. All the topics and links discussed can be found here:https://github.com/vmware/vcf-security-and-compliance-guidelineshttps://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/06/confidential-computing-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/05/security-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/platform-security-vcf-9-1/

Broadcom just announced VCF 9.1, so it was time to get an expert on the show to talk us through the enhancements that will be coming for vSAN specifically. As always, Pete Koehler shared all the facts and figures of the release. He discusses Global Dedupe, Native S3 Object Storage, Ransomware Protection and Recovery and much more!vSAN 9.1 announcementvSAN Compression and Global Dedupe in VCF 9.1Cyber Recovery Ready Nodes!vSAN Auto-RAID