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VCF Installer Deploying VVF Components with VCF Entitlements

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Despite its name, the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Installer can deploy both VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) environments. Many users incorrectly believe the VCF Installer restricts you to only the specific product deployments that you have entitlements for, VVF deployment for VVF entitlements and VCF deployments for VCF entitlements.


The VCF Installer does NOT care nor has any knowledge of your license entitlements when performing a deployment. In fact, both VVF and VCF deployments will default to the 90 day evaluation period until the components are licensed by VCF Operations, which is performed by a user post-deployment to retrieve product entitlements.

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Simplify License Management across VCF Operations Fleet & Standalone Deployment for Monitoring

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Within a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 fleet, a single VCF Operations instance provides centralized license management and fleet management capabilities for all managed VCF instances.


That said, additional Standalone VCF Operations 9.0 instances can also be deployed for monitoring only use cases, which is a scenario that has been coming up more frequently with customers.

Although the VCF 9.0 Licensing documentation briefly references this supported use case, there is not much details on how this actually works. After getting a quick primer on this use case from fellow colleague Jared Burns and the VCF Licensing PM, I thought I would put together a quick blog post using some visuals I had created to help explain how this scenario can be setup.

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Automated Initial Configuration of VCF Operations 9 using CASA API

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If you have recently followed my automated deployment of the VCF Operations 9.0 OVA, you might also be interested in automating the initial setup wizard that appears when you first access the appliance in a browser, as shown in the screenshot below.


Funny enough, this was a topic I had originally planned to cover back in 2014 using the vRealize Operations Cluster and Slice Administration (CASA) API, but I never got to Part 3 of the blog post. 😅

The CASA APIs are still applicable in VCF Operations 9.0 and are now better documented. You can access the built in API documentation by navigating to https://vcf02.vcf.lab/casa/api-guide.html (replace the FQDN with your deployment) which includes example requests, which are always helpful when learning how to use a new API!


To demonstrate the use of the VCF Operations CASA API to automate the initial configuration, I have created a simple PowerShell script that you can use and extend.

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