Unexplored Territory

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 Library

VCF Edge Design Blueprint for Manufacturing

VCF Edge Design Blueprint for Defense
ZTP:
Blog - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VMware Cloud Foundation Edge 9.1

Demo Video - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VCF Edge 9.1

Tech 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=UFjSCyLP384
Cyber 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-guidelines
https://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 announcement
vSAN Compression and Global Dedupe in VCF 9.1
Cyber Recovery Ready Nodes!
vSAN Auto-RAID