It’s Always DNS: Debugging a VCF Management Services Bootstrap Failure during 9.1.1 bringup

In an effort to adopt signed certificates in my lab, I decided to do a fresh bringup on a domain I own rather than some random one I made up for my lab, for example:Old: wilson.labNew: mydomain.com For mydomain.com, to save having to create manual DNS entry for new services I bring up outside of … Read more

VCF 9.1.1 – SDDC Manager backup location fails with gateway timeout 504 error

Note: I am still investigating this, so whilst it looks like it might be the root cause, I am not 100% just yet. I’ll update once I confirm. I run SFTPGo in a container for my VCF file based backups, the reason is I want a clear security boundary for what VCF can (and cannot) … Read more

2026 VCF 9 Lab Update

After spending a bit of time tidying up cables in my rack, I figured I’d take the opportunity to write about my current setup. Here it is in all its glory: Not the greatest picture. From top to bottom: Here’s a diagram of how it’s all connected together. Not in the diagram is a UniFi … Read more

VCF 9 – how to add a host to an existing cluster?

I’ve been experimenting with VCF 9 in my homelab recently and I’ve been trying out some day 2 activities. Invariably, with homelabs you end up having to rebuild some (or all) of it as you experiment, and I found myself in that position. I do intend on writing a blog covering how my lab is … Read more