Episode 100, YESSSS! Finally, we managed to get there. For this episode, I invited two Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) product managers to explain what GCVE is all about. We had Dr. Wade Holmes on the show, 84 episodes ago, to introduce GCVE, so it was time to re-introduce GCVE and discuss the current solution, and the benefits it brings with for instance the flexibility in node types , bring your own licensing , disaster recovery, networking, and much more. Ken and Sai had some interesting st...
Jul 20, 2025•36 min
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 was recently launched, and that means vSAN 9.0 is also available. There's many new features introduced in 9.0, so a perfect time to ask Pete Koehler to join the podcast once again and go over some of these key enhancements. Below you can find the links we discussed during the episode! Blog - Network Traffic Separation Blog - vSAN ESA Dedupe Blog - Stretched Topologies in VCF 9 Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/guest(s), and not n...
Jun 23, 2025•35 min
I recently came across an excellent blog by William Lam, which discussed how to set up VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x on a single box for home labs . William created a Github page that goes over the whole process, and provided all the tweaks and scripts needed to get it done. I wanted to discuss this process with William, as I believe many folks in the VMware/Broadcom community will be interested in deploying this at home, or at work, to go through that full VCF experience but without needing a lar...
Jun 03, 2025•32 min
I recently read a blog post on AI/ML performance on top of VCF, and figured it was time to invite Frank Denneman back to the podcast. During the episode we discuss VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA , and Frank also mention Ollama as a great starting point. Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/guest(s), and not necessarily those of Broadcom, VMware by Broadcom, or SAP....
May 19, 2025•52 min
I recently recorded a podcast episode with Johan and Jeffrey for their podcast, When Shit Hits The Fan. It was a fantastic conversation, which I wanted to share with all of you. As such I asked Johan if I could crosspost it. Make sure to subscribe to the WSHTF podcast channel ( Apple , Spotify ) , as it has some fantastic stories from various fantastic guests! Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/guest(s), and not necessarily those of Broadcom, VMware by Broad...
May 05, 2025•52 min
For this episode I decided to invite Johan van Amersfoort to discuss with us his experiences at NVIDIA GTC, Kubecon London, and of course the Dutch VMUG. Or should we say, the start of event season? Johan shared countless of updates and videos on LinkedIn , make sure to check those out while you are at it! Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/guest(s), and not necessarily those of Broadcom, VMware by Broadcom, or SAP....
Apr 21, 2025•37 min
Recently Broadcom announced that vSAN ESA support for SAP HANA was introduced . Erik Rieger is Broadcom's Principal SAP Global Technical Alliance Manager and Architect, and as such I invited him on the show to go over what this actually means, and why this is important for customers! For more details make sure to check: SAP note 3406060 – SAP HANA on VMware vSphere 8 and vSAN 8 for details. SAP HANA and VMware support pages SAP HANA on HCI powered by vSAN vSphere and SAP HANA best practices Disc...
Apr 07, 2025•46 min
Recently a new white paper was released on the topic of latency-sensitive workloads. I invited Mark Achtemichuck ( X , LinkedIn ) to the show to go over the various recommendations and best practices. Mark highlight many important configuration settings, and also recommends everyone to not only read the white paper, but also the vSphere 8 performance documentation . Also, his VMware Explore session comes highly recommended, make sure to watch it! Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in t...
Mar 23, 2025•36 min
Recently VMware Data Services Manager 2.2 was released , so I had to invite my good friend Cormac Hogan to discuss all the enhancements we introduced to an already great product. Of course, we also discussed the Tech Preview for the Object Storage Service, which enables you to deploy MinIO at scale! Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/guest(s), and not necessarily those of Broadcom or VMware by Broadcom....
Mar 10, 2025•21 min
In episode 091 of the Unexplored Territory Podcast we have Ravi Soundararajan as a guest to discuss all things performance. There's a reason Ravi's name on X is " vCenterPerfGuy ". Ravi has been involved in performance troubleshooting and engineering for the longest time, and shares his insights in some of the most recent findings with regards to vSphere Tagging and the API performance. Ravi also discusses vCenter bandwidth requirements and some of the vCenter task limits there are in place. Mak...
Feb 24, 2025•47 min
Some of you have seen these new certifications popping up, VCP-VVF and VCP-VCF. I asked Bart Peeters, who recently took both the Admin exams, as well as the VCF architect exam, to talk us through his experience and some of his insights. Discussed on the podcast: VMUG Advantage with free exam voucher details VCP-VVF Admin experience VCP-VCF Admin experience VCP-VCF Architect experience VCF Course Exam pricing announcement Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions shared in this podcast are our own/gu...
Jan 26, 2025•22 min
Over the last few years stretched environments have been extremely popular amongst vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation customers. The storage is the easy part, the network is usually where it gets more complex. To discuss the best practices, requirements, and caveats I invited Paudie O'Riordan to the show to share his knowledge and expertise! Explore session: VMware vSAN Stretched Clusters and VMware Cloud Foundation: What's Changed, What's New vSAN Stretched Cluster Guide vSAN Stretched PoC Guide ...
Jan 12, 2025•59 min
For episode 087 of the podcast, I invited Deji Akomolafe to the show to discuss Microsoft on VMware VCF and vSphere. Deji shares his experiences virtualizing and running Microsoft apps on top of VCF and vSphere and discusses some of the best practices and constraints. Whitepapers and tools discussed in the episode: Protecting mission critical workloads with Live Site Recovery Microsoft SQL on vSphere best practices Diskspd for bench Explore session - Improving Workload Availability Using vMotion...
Dec 16, 2024•1 hr 5 min
In episode 086 of the podcast, we discuss the most recent VCF 9 and vSAN 9 storage and data protection announcements with Pete Koehler. These announcements were made at VMware Explore 2024, and in my opinion, will bring both vSAN and VCF to the next level. During the discussion, we mentioned the following YouTube videos, which demonstrate the capabilities that are planned for vSAN and VCF 9: vSAN Site Take Over and Site Maintenance vSAN to vSAN Native Replication VCF Federated Storage Views And ...
Dec 02, 2024•34 min
In this episode, Johan shares his exhilarating experience climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, discussing the physical and mental challenges faced during the ascent. Frank then transitions into explaining his new role focusing on Private AI, detailing the importance of providing efficient tools for data scientists. The conversation wraps up with reflections on the podcast journey, including changes in roles and the impact of their discussions.TakeawaysJohan climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with friends and c...
Sep 29, 2024•45 min
Brandon Frost shares his experience with memory tiering and the use of Intel Optane in his large private cloud environment. He explains how memory tiering helped optimize memory usage and reduce costs by offloading cold memory to a non-active tier. He also discusses the challenges of upgrading memory and the benefits of using NVMe-based tiering. Brandon expresses his interest in Project Peaberry, a memory tiering offloading card, and its potential use cases. He highlights the importance of hi...
Sep 15, 2024•36 min
VMware Explore 2024 in Las Vegas is a wrap. The team was present and will give you the opportunity to get an idea what the show was like. You will hear large number of guests covering some of the announcements, some specific aspects of the conference (like the Hands-on Labs), but also some of the vendors on the expo. The episode contains the following topics:The future of VMUG with Brad TompkinsA hands-on labs tour with Brandon Bazan and Joshua SchneeSpring One and Spring AI with DaShaun Cart...
Sep 02, 2024•46 min
Arvind Jagannath, a platform product manager at Broadcom, discusses memory tiering and its benefits for customers with Duncan. He explains that enterprise applications are becoming more memory-bound and require better performance. Memory tiering helps address the CPU to memory imbalance that many customers face, allowing for better CPU utilization and reducing costs. Arvind also mentions the challenges of expanding memory and the need for a solution like memory tiering. He introduces Project ...
Aug 19, 2024•38 min
In this conversation, Katarina Brookfield discusses her career trajectory and her current role at Broadcom. She shares defining moments in her career, including her experience working on the Black Sea Maritime Archaeology project. The conversation then shifts to the newly announced vSphere IaaS control plane and its benefits. Katarina explains that the control plane provides a comprehensive solution for deploying workloads, including additional services like storage provisioning and load bala...
Aug 05, 2024•46 min
Summary:Ala Dewberry introduces Project Marigold, a plugin that aims to make GPUs a first-class citizen on vSphere by providing visibility and observability of GPU metrics at the cluster and data center level. The plugin helps infrastructure administrators manage GPUs more strategically and enables data scientists and application developers to have a frictionless experience. Ala also discusses the use cases for private AI and encourages users to give feedback on the plugin.TakeawaysDefining m...
Jul 21, 2024•20 min
VMware recently released vSphere and vSAN 8.0 Update 3, and of course, we had to invite Feidhlim, Jason, and Pete back on the show to discuss what's new in these releases. There's awesome new functionality released and some great enhancements, so make sure to listen to the full episode. Key Takeaways:vSphere 8.0 update 3 introduces the vSphere Live Patch Update Path, which allows for patching ESXi hosts without evacuating VMs or entering full maintenance mode.Improvements in GPU functionality...
Jul 07, 2024•42 min
SummaryThe conversation explores the features and benefits of the Tanzu Platform, which accelerates application delivery and simplifies the development process. The platform abstracts the complexities of Kubernetes, allowing developers to focus on writing code and creating business value. It offers four golden commands: build, bind, deploy, and scale, which streamline the development process. The platform also reduces administrative overhead for IT teams, with a developer-to-platform engineer...
Jun 24, 2024•56 min
In this conversation, Duncan and Cormac Hogan discuss VMware's Data Services Manager (DSM) and its role in offering data services in a full-stack private cloud. They cover topics such as the use cases for DSM, the integration with Kubernetes, the support for different databases, the automation capabilities, and the licensing model. Cormac highlights the features of DSM, including lifecycle management, backups, scaling, monitoring, and advanced settings. He also mentions the upcoming release o...
Jun 09, 2024•30 min
In this conversation, Myles Gray discusses the AI workflow and its personas, the responsibilities of data scientists and developers in deploying AI models, the role of infrastructure administrators, and the challenges of deploying models at the edge. He also explains the concept of quantization and the importance of accuracy in models. Additionally, he talks about the pipeline for deploying models and the difference between unit testing and integration testing. Unit testing is used to test th...
May 26, 2024•49 min
SummaryFor this special edition of the podcast Duncan invited Michael Roy to discuss the latest VMware Workstation and VMware Fusion announcements. VMware Workstation and Fusion are desktop hypervisor products that allow users to run virtual machines on their PC or Mac. Starting today, Workstation and Fusion commercial licenses will only be available through annual subscriptions. The price for both products is now $199 per year. The free versions of Fusion Player and Workstation Player are be...
May 14, 2024•20 min
In this conversation, Johan van Amersfoort interviews William Rizzo about the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and its impact on cloud computing and modern infrastructure. They discuss the role of the CNCF in making cloud native technology ubiquitous and the support it provides to cloud native projects. They also explore the advantages of using CNCF projects for IT admins and platform engineers, including the ability to build platforms with integrated and efficient tools. They touch o...
May 13, 2024•50 min
In episode 073 Duncan and Pete discuss various updates and changes related to vSAN, including ReadyNode configurations, licensing, vSAN Max, capacity reporting, and compression ratios. They highlight the improvements in compression ratios with vSAN ESA, which can result in significant space efficiency gains. They also discuss the use cases for vSAN Max and vSAN HCI, as well as the flexibility in making changes to ReadyNode configurations. Overall, they emphasize the ongoing development and ex...
Apr 28, 2024•39 min
SummaryChris Gully discusses his current role in the new Broadcom organization and highlights of his career. He emphasizes the importance of staying relevant in the technology industry and the value of working with cool and smart people. The conversation then shifts to the topic of small language models (SLMs) and their role in the landscape of gen AI applications. Gully explains that SLMs offer a more progressive approach to working with large language models (LLMs) and enable more efficient...
Apr 14, 2024•48 min
In this new episode of the Unexplored Territory Podcast, DaShaun Carter, a Spring Developer Advocate at VMware Tanzu and Broadcom, discusses his career highlights, his home lab setup, and his passion for Spring. He explains the concept of developer experience and how Spring and Tanzu contribute to it. DaShaun also highlights the innovations in Spring, such as AOT processing and native images, and their impact on use cases. He discusses the relationship between the open source aspect of Spring...
Apr 01, 2024•52 min
In episode 070, we spoke with Patryk Wolsza about vSAN performance. Patryk wrote some great whitepapers on the topic of vSAN OSA vs ESA, vSAN on AMD vs vSAN on Intel, and vSAN with RDMA and 100GbE. In this episode, we discuss the benefits of ESA, Intel CPUs, and RDMA/100GbE.Some links to topics discussed:vSAN and RDMA/100GbEHow Server Consolidation with VMware vSAN 8 Boosts Performance by more than 7.4x!VMware vSAN and 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors Outpace AMD GenoaBoost Performanc...
Mar 18, 2024•35 min
