Introducing the VCF Insider Community

VCF Insider started with a simple idea: document the real-world side of VMware Cloud Foundation.

Not just the polished version. Not just the happy path. The real version.

The version where DNS matters more than you expected. Where certificates ruin your afternoon. Where NSX validation errors make you question your life choices. Where a homelab teaches you more in one weekend than a slide deck ever could.

That is what VCF Insider has always been about: unfiltered stories and solutions from the field.

And honestly, the more I’ve worked through VCF upgrades, lab builds, NSX issues, certificate problems, and operational edge cases, the more obvious it became that these conversations need somewhere to live.

Now there is a place for that conversation to continue.

The VCF Insider Community is Live

I’m happy to announce the launch of the new VCF Insider Community.

Visit the VCF Insider Community

The goal is simple: create a practical, field-focused space for VMware Cloud Foundation engineers, architects, administrators, automation folks, and homelab builders to share what they are seeing, building, fixing, and learning.

This is not intended to replace official documentation, support channels, or vendor resources. Those all have their place.

This is for the stuff that usually lives in screenshots, notes, Slack threads, lab journals, change windows, troubleshooting calls, and “I should probably write this down before I forget it” moments.

Who This Is For

The community is for anyone working with, learning, designing, operating, or labbing VMware Cloud Foundation.

You do not need to be an expert to participate. If you are building a lab, planning an upgrade, troubleshooting NSX, writing PowerCLI, studying for VCP-VCF, or just trying to understand how all the pieces fit together, you are exactly the kind of person this community is meant for.

What You’ll Find There

The community is organized around the areas I think matter most to people working with VCF in the real world:

VMware Cloud Foundation — deployments, upgrades, lifecycle management, architecture, and operational lessons learned
NSX & Networking — overlay networking, edge clusters, VLANs, MTU, routing, firewalling, and physical network design
vCenter & ESXi — clusters, hosts, DRS, HA, lifecycle, certificates, and troubleshooting
Automation & PowerCLI — scripts, APIs, JSON templates, audit workflows, and repeatable operational tooling
Homelab — hardware, nested labs, physical hosts, storage, networking, and lessons learned from breaking things safely
Career & Certifications — VCP-VCF, career growth, interview prep, and building real-world experience
Knowledge Base — short-form fixes, known issues, and KB-style field notes

There are also starter threads already posted to help get the conversation moving.

Why Create a Forum?

Articles are great for polished lessons learned, but not everything needs to be a full blog post.

Sometimes you just want to ask:

Has anyone else seen this validation error?
What did you use for your lab networking?
How are you handling NSX upgrades?
What broke during your VCF deployment?
Does this PowerCLI approach look safe?
Is this a lab problem or a design problem?

That kind of back-and-forth works better in a community format.

The blog will still be where I publish longer writeups, deployment notes, upgrade lessons, automation walkthroughs, and opinion pieces. The community gives us a place to discuss, compare notes, and build on those ideas.

Built Around Field Experience

VCF is powerful, but anyone who has worked with it knows the field experience matters.

Version compatibility matters.

DNS matters.

Certificates matter.

Physical networking matters.

Resource sizing matters.

Documentation matters, but so does the part where someone says, “Here is what actually happened when I tried this.”

That is the kind of community I want VCF Insider to become.

Practical. Technical. Honest. Useful.

Come Join the Conversation

If you are working with VMware Cloud Foundation, NSX, vCenter, ESXi, automation, operations, or homelabs, I’d love to have you join the community.

Introduce yourself, share your lab, post a question, write up a fix, or just follow along.

If you have a lesson learned, a weird error, a lab design, a script, or a question that might help the next person, post it.

Join the VCF Insider Community

See you there.