Category Archives: Cloud

Random Short Take #109

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Random short take #109. Looking for news that’s old? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s get random.

  • This opinion piece would be hilarious, if it wasn’t so alarmingly accurate. We weren’t allowed to trust Wikipedia articles but whatever AI tells us is just fine? Let’s pump the brakes and reflect, please.
  • And speaking of art and artifice, this post from John Birmingham on digital media versus holding the art in your hand was great.
  • Need to store that digital media somewhere? Backblaze knows a bit about that. Read the Q2 2026 Drive Stats report here.
  • Speaking of storage, this article over at El Reg on the Domesday Project was pretty cool.
  • And while we’re talking long-term storage, in press release news, check out what Cerabyte has been up to.
  • In people news, Preston de Guise is looking for a job. Hire him if you need someone smart who can really help your organisation.
  • I’m not looking to return to the world of home lab builds, but if you’re looking for a primer, this article covers off some of the basics really well.
  • And this is just … ugh.

Random Short Take #108

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Random short take #108. Looking for old news? You’ve come to the right place. Let’s get random.

Random Short Take #107

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Random short take #107. Looking for old news? I’ve got just the thing. Let’s get random.

  • This article from Matt Allford struck a chord. I have an awful lot of USB cables in my house, and I have no idea what the specs of most of them are.
  • Speaking of things I only have a superficial understanding of, this article from Christian on Intel Arc SR-IOV hardware transcoding with Plex on Proxmox VE was great.
  • Still using an Apple Time Capsule? You’re out of luck and in luck at the same time, as is explained over at The Register.
  • Speaking of backup and recovery, this article about Backblaze has me questioning everything I’m doing to keep stuff safe at home. I’ve checked that my iCloud data is protected (and recoverable), but only because the machine I have Backblaze installed on has downloaded copies of that data. For the stuff I keep on Dropbox and Google Drive, it doesn’t seem as straight forward. Not that I’d ever recommend you only keep data with one provider. Maybe I need to write something more about this, if only to confirm that I’m doing correctly myself.
  • In resilience news (is that really a category?), this was an interesting article on AWS and what’s happening in the Middle East. The response from AWS has been fascinating, as have some of the hot takes from so-called “disaster recovery experts”. I’m looking forward to talking with customers in Western Queensland about the risk matrix they’ve drawn up that has them in a tizzy about losing three availability zones. There’s preparedness and then there’s how you recover, I guess.
  • Missing using FireWire with the most recent version of macOS? This article from Jeff Geerling might be of use if you still have a MiniDV camera you need to connect to something. It just won’t be with macOS.
  • Speaking of things not working after updates, you could always follow John Birmingham’s advice and just never update. But I’m not sure that’s really sustainable.
  • I think Netflix does some really cool stuff from a technical perspective, but for the most part the catalogue seems to be trash. So these kinds of posts from people rediscovering physical media are always nice to read.

VMware Cloud on AWS – TMCHAM – Part 16 – Remove External Datastores

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In this edition of Things My Customers Have Asked Me (TMCHAM), I’m going to do a (really) short post on removing external datastores on the VMware-managed VMware Cloud on AWS platform. It might seem like a simple thing, but it can be confusing for customers who haven’t done it before.

 

The Problem

If you’ve used an external datastore (either FSx for NetApp ONTAP or the artist formerly known as VMware Cloud Flex Storage) with your SDDC, you’ll know that management of the connection of the datastores to your SDDC is done via the Cloud Console, and not via vCenter. There might come a time when you want to remove that storage, either because you’ve bought more nodes and want to use vSAN, or you’re possibly shrinking your footprint. Whatever the reason, if you do try to remove the datastore via vCenter (assuming you’ve removed your workloads from the datastore), you’ll get an error about insufficient privileges. At first it might seem like it’s because you have VMs still present on the datastore (and if this is the case, contact Global Support to help you if you can’t find them). It’s more likely, however, that you’re not in the right place to do this activity.

 

The Solution

The solution is simple. In the VMware Cloud Console, go to the Storage tab of the SDDC you want to remove the datastore from, and click on Detach Datastore. And that’s it. It won’t work if you’ve got workloads running there, so make sure you’ve cleaned everything up / moved it somewhere else before you attempt this one.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – April 2026

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What’s New?

A new node type is now available for deployment with VMware Cloud on AWS. The i7i.metal-24xl instance type is now generally available for both new and existing SDDCs and cluster deployments on SDDC version 1.26v2. Exciting? Confusing? Let’s dive in.

Specifications

The key specifications of the i7i.metal-24xl are as follows:

Specification i7i.metal-24xl
Processor 5th Gen Intel Xeon (Emerald Rapids)
Hyperthreaded Cores 96
Physical Cores 48
Memory 768 GiB DDR5 (5600 MT/s)
Local NVMe Storage 6 x 3.75 NVMe SSDs
Usable Capacity* vSAN OSA ~ 13 TB*
vSAN ESA ~ 20 TB*
Network Bandwidth 56.25 Gbps

*Note that the capacity of individual nodes will be dependent upon RAID configurations, FTT settings, and factors such as compression. You can check out the VMC Sizer to work out how much capacity a particular cluster configuration will give you.

Where Can I Deploy It?

The i7i.metal-24xl instance type is available today for purchase and deployment in the following AWS Regions:

Geography AWS Regions
Americas US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), US West (N. California), Canada (Central)
Europe Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), Europe (Frankfurt), Europe (Stockholm), Europe (Milan)
Middle East Middle East (Bahrain)
Asia Pacific Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad)

Deployment Considerations and Constraints

The i7i.metal-24xl can be deployed in a new SDDC, or deployed as a secondary cluster in an existing SDDC. Note that the i7i instance type is only available for SDDCs running on version 1.26v2. In-place cluster conversions are also supported, with support for converting i3, i4i, and i3en hosts to i7i.metal-24xl. Note that clusters running virtual machines on Virtual Machine Hardware version 21 are not eligible for conversion from i4i to i7i, due to hardware compatibility limitations. Also, if you are converting stretched clusters, these will be converted as OSA stretched clusters, as there is no current support for ESA stretched clusters in VMware Cloud on AWS, nor is there support for converting OSA to ESA in-place.

To better understand your sizing requirements, you can contact your account team to provide a conversion estimate. You can also run the VMC Sizer on your own SDDCs to provide an estimate.

 

Thoughts

The announcement was published on April 1st, but this is no joke. This instance type is a welcome addition to the VMware Cloud on AWS catalogue. Customers looking for a cost-effective replacement for their i3.metal hosts, or a smaller Pilot Light footprint for use with VMware Live Cyber Recovery will be happy, as will customers with processing requirements that want to take advantage of a modern CPU like the Emerald Rapids. The good news is that nothing else changes – your VMware Cloud on AWS service continues as before, managed by Broadcom, and evolving in line with your requirements. You can read the announcement blog post here, and the release notes are here.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – January 2026

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I posted last month about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to the host usage API and changes to the VMC Sizer tool. It’s a new calendar year, but the team hasn’t stopped, delivering some new updates via a soon to be rolled out VMware Cloud on AWS software bundle. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes located here, and there’s a great blog post from the team here.

 

What’s New?

The default version for all new SDDC deployments is now 1.26, and it will be rolled out across the fleet in the next little while. A key component of this release is vSphere 8.0 Update 3. This a long-term support release of vSphere, and delivers improved performance and reliability. Notable, also, is the NSX version – in this update it goes to 4.2.3.1. I’ve linked to it before, but check out the timeless classic “Correlating VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Versions With Their vSphere Components” for more information. So, an update is great, but what do you really get? Let’s dig in.

Support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture

This is the big one – support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is now generally available for VMware Cloud on AWS. Note that “vSAN ESA is supported only for i4i.metal host types on newly deployed single availability zone SDDCs and for new secondary i4i.metal clusters on existing SDDCs that have been upgraded to 1.26”. So, no brownfield support, but there’s still scope to do some pretty cool stuff.

New vSAN ESA features include:

  • Native snapshots for faster backups;
  • A storage pool architecture that reduces fault domains and improves data availability; and
  • For smaller customers, supports for a RAID-5 storage policy starting from 3 hosts gives customers more storage capacity on smaller clusters.

Bring Your Own Keys (BYOK): VMC Now Includes VM Encryption

VMware Cloud on AWS now supports customer-managed VM Encryption through an external KMIP-compliant Key Management Systems (KMS). What does that mean? You can now use your own keys for workload VM encryption – while the VMC control plane continues to use the AWS KMS (managed by Broadcom) for vSAN encryption.

VM Hardware Version 21

VM Hardware Version 21 is pretty cool, offering support for:

  • 256 Disks per VM – Massive storage capacity through 64 disks across 4 vNVMe adapters;
  • NVMe 1.3 – Enhanced performance for Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022 deployments.
  • NVMe for Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) – High-performance shared storage for mission-critical clustered applications.
  • Latest Guest OS Support – Compatibility with RHEL 10, Oracle Linux 10, Debian 13, and FreeBSD 15.

The blog post has an excellent comparison of Version 20 and Version 21.

VMware Tools 12.5.4

VMware Tools 12.5.4 offers improved driver compatibility, enhanced VM performance, and provides better integration with the underlying VMC infrastructure.

 

Thoughts

Software updates aren’t always headlining news, but support for ESA on VMC (finally) is news that’s sure to make quite a few customers happy. I’ve no doubt they’re sick of hearing how cool it is from their on-premises counterparts and are keen to be part of the action. The updates to VMware Tools and VM Hardware version support are also minor, but important updates to the platform.

VMware Cloud on AWS – TMCHAM – Part 15 – Hosts and Subscriptions

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In this edition of Things My Customers Have Asked Me (TMCHAM), I’m going to do a short post on hosts and subscriptions on the VMware-managed VMware Cloud on AWS platform. It might seem like a simple thing, but it can be confusing for customers who are new to the service.

 

Definitions

Subscriptions

A subscription entitles you to run a host (or hosts) of a particular type (I3en.metal or I4i.metal) in a particular Region. The SKU of the subscription you purchase determines what you can run. For example, if you’d like to run I4i.metal hosts in the Sydney Region, you would need to purchase the VMC-AWS-I4-APE product. One of these entitles you to one host, and so on. The minimum term is 12 months, and these can be co-termed for longer periods to coincide with other product subscriptions. It’s important to understand that particular hosts aren’t tied to particular subscriptions. The subscription is at an Organization level, and its availability is based on a Region and Host type. So if you had 12 I4i subscriptions, and 6 I4i hosts deployed in the Sydney Region, and six in the Singapore Region, you’d be good to go. What you couldn’t do is use those I4i subscriptions to cover your deployment of I3en hosts in Ireland, for example. For that you’d need the VMC-AWS-I3EN-CCR SKU.

Note also, and this is pretty important, “[I]f you have hosts in excess of your purchased subscriptions, whether through EDRS storage scale-outs or due to expired subscriptions, your access to the VMware Cloud on AWS service and your SDDCs may be paused until the overconsumption is resolved. After 48 hours of excess usage, you will lose access to your SDDC(s) and workloads until you purchase sufficient subscriptions, and soon after that, your SDDC(s) will be irrevocably deleted”.

What’s In The Box?

So what do you get with VMware Cloud on AWS subscriptions? You get access to the following components on a per host basis:

  • A Software-Defined Data Centre (SDDC), consisting of:
    • AWS EC2 bare metal servers (I3en or I4i)
    • VMware vSphere
    • VMware vCenter Server
    • VMware NSX
    • VMware vDefend Gateway and Distributed Firewall (formerly NSX) – note that vDefend Advanced Threat Protection is sold separately.
    • VMware vSAN
    • VMware HCX
  • Self-service provisioning of SDDCs from the VMware Cloud Console at vmc.broadcom.com.
  • Maintenance, patching, and upgrades of the SDDC, performed by VMware by Broadcom

Note that License Portability is not supported with VMware Cloud on AWS.

 

Thoughts

The key thing to remember with subscriptions is that you need to buy subscriptions that match the host type and Region you’ll be deploying into. And you’ll need at least two to get started.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – December 2025

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I posted last month about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to stretched cluster and HCX enhancements. The team has been working hard on some more new features, and I thought I’d cover them off briefly here. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes are here, and there’s a great blog post from the team here.

 

What’s New?

New Host Usage Report API

Have you been wondering what’s going on with resources in your VMC on AWS environment? Wonder no more. All the cool cloud kids are using APIs, and VMC on AWS is no different. Now you can retrieve daily host usage reports for any date range and filter by region, instance type, SKU, and other attributes – all via the API. There’s no need to call me and ask for a report on what’s happening, nor do you need to log a ticket to get access to the information. Here’s what a sample query looks like.

curl -H 'Authorization: <value>' https://{api_host}/api/activityanalytic/{org_id}/hosts/{freq}/usage-report?start_date=value&end_date=v

Check out the documentation here.

Redesigned VMware Cloud on AWS UI

The VMware Cloud on AWS UI has also had a facelift, and the interface is more streamlined and easier to navigate. You can access it at https://vmc.broadcom.com.

VMC Sizer & Cluster Conversion Updates

Ever since I started working with VMware Cloud on AWS, I’ve been a huge fan of the VMC Sizer tool. It’s so much better than trying to build solution estimates with a spreadsheet and a dream. If you’re an existing I3.metal customer, you’ve likely (hopefully) been planning a migration to I3en.metal or I4i.metal nodes. The conversion estimates can be a bit of a mystery, and have frequently required involving people like me and folks from the SRE team to provide these estimates. The product team has been working to make the process more streamlined, while giving customers improved visibility into why the numbers are the way they are. The output from sizing estimates now provides clear reasoning behind why a specific number of hosts is required, and this is based on 6 elements (compute, memory, storage utilisation (with both conservative and aggressive options), vSAN storage policies, and NSX Edges). It’s never been a simple matter of saying two I3.metal hosts equals one I4i.metal host, and now the sizer output reflects this more clearly.

The following constraints should be noted:

  • Final host counts and sizing will be validated during the actual cluster conversion. Sometimes you end up with more, sometimes you end up with fewer hosts.
  • Customers should re-run sizing evaluations after any significant configuration, resource, or other changes. Please don’t add another 30TiB workload to your cluster and expect the same result.
  • No RAID policy changes are made during conversion. This is especially notable if you’re using custom storage policies in your environment.
  • Subscription estimates provided as part of this workflow are for planning purposes only and do not represent guaranteed final requirements.
  • Actual subscription needs may be higher than estimated, requiring additional subscription purchase post-conversion. You’re given a small window to make good on this.
  • Refunds or subscription reductions will not be provided if estimates exceed actual needs.

 

Thoughts

As I mentioned in my previous post, VMware Cloud on AWS is not going anywhere, and the product and engineering teams continue to innovate and work hard to ensure that users get the best value from their investment in the VMware Cloud on AWS solution. The Host Usage Report is extremely useful, and for those customers concerned about cluster conversions, the improvements to the VMC Sizer should improve the confidence in the sizing process.

VMware Cloud on AWS – What’s New – November 2025

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I posted a little while ago about what’s new in VMware Cloud on AWS, particularly as it related to stretched cluster enhancements. The team has been working hard on a few new features, and I thought I’d cover them off briefly here. More detail can be found in the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes are here.

 

What’s New?

Improved Stretched Cluster Scale Down Support

When working with stretched clusters in VMC previously, there was a rule that, once a stretched cluster grew to 6 hosts, they couldn’t be reduced back down below that number. As requirements change over time, and customers look at alternative solutions and deployment topologies, this has become something of a blocker in terms of flexible deployment options. To combat this challenge, customers can now scale down from 6 or more hosts to 4 hosts (2 hosts per Availability Zone) or 2 hosts (1 host per Availability Zone). Why would you need to do this? You might have had a stretched cluster with I3.metal nodes deployed in it and you’ve recently converted that cluster to I4i.metal nodes. You very likely won’t need as many I4i nodes as you did I3s, so this gives you the option to reduce the cluster to an appropriate size. There are, of course, some constraints:

  • Firstly, if you’re using a “Large” (as opposed to Regular or Medium) management appliance deployment in your primary cluster, you can’t scale down below 6 hosts (3 per site).
  • Secondly, if you’re using custom CPU counts, and that count is 8, you can only scale down to 4 hosts (2 per site).
  • Finally, if you’re trying to scale down your cluster and that would leave the cluster with insufficient resources for your management and workload VMs, you won’t be able to do it. That is, you can’t make away resource constraints.

Note that if you are scaling down to 4 or 2 hosts, the Elastic DRS (EDRS) policy will be changed to “Storage Scale Up Only”. This ensures that EDRS won’t scale in your cluster leaving you with availability issues.

Have a stretched cluster and want to remove hosts? You can use this documentation to get it done. I’ve also covered the process here.

HCX version 4.11.3 Now Available for VMware Cloud on AWS

It is recommended that customers upgrade to HCX 4.11.3 as soon as possible to avoid support issues. It’s important to note that the “WAN optimization feature is no longer available. Before upgrading, users must deselect and remove all existing WAN-OPT appliance services from all Service Meshes and compute profiles. The upgrade will not proceed until the WAN-OPT appliance is removed from all Service Meshes as well as all compute profiles deployed in a given HCX connector / cloud system”. You can find out what’s new in HCX in the Release Notes.

 

Thoughts

Stretched clusters have been a great solution for VMC customers, but have, at times, denied customers the ability to make use of flexible deployment models. The addition of non-stretched clusters in stretched cluster SDDCs in September, and the ability to scale down below the current threshold of 6 hosts, should help customers make the most of their stretched clusters while still enjoying the ability to work with a more flexible topology. I’m also a big fan of HCX, particularly supported versions of HCX. VMware Cloud on AWS is still around, and still doing a great job of hosting VMware-based workloads on AWS infrastructure. The team continues to make enhancements to the product, and I’m looking forward to talking about what’s coming next month as well. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and I can help, or point you to someone who can.

Random Short Take #105

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Random short take #105. Want news? Sorry I’ve had a bit on. Let’s get random.