Virtually Speaking Podcast

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson welcome Vincent Riccio, VMware automation expert, for a deep dive into SaltStack automation and its role inside VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Advanced Services.

Vincent explains how SaltStack, delivered through VMware’s Advanced Cyber Compliance (ACC) service, brings powerful configuration management, state enforcement, and automated remediation to modern private cloud environments. We explore how SaltStack continuously maintains desired system states, detects drift, and automatically corrects issues in seconds — all at scale.

You’ll learn:
• How SaltStack’s master–minion architecture enables secure inbound-only communication
• The difference between configuration management and state management
• How the reactor + beacon system enables real-time automated drift remediation
• Built-in compliance and vulnerability scanning using CIS benchmarks
• Resource requirements for SaltStack appliances in lab and production environments
• Multi-language automation support with YAML, Python, and JSON
• Robust Windows management with WinRepo
• How SaltStack integrates into VMware’s broader automation and VCF advanced services ecosystem

Vincent also shares real-world insights into scaling SaltStack, Postgres database sizing, compliance scanning depth (including hundreds of Ubuntu security checks), and how this modular, Python-based platform helps customers automate faster, safer, and smarter.

If you’re exploring VCF automation, private cloud operations, or infrastructure-as-code, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

This episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast features hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson joined by returning guest Pete Koehler for a deep dive into vSAN and the evolving conversation around application versus infrastructure high availability. Pete Koehler highlights recent updates to vSAN Ready Nodes that significantly reduce hardware requirements, including up to 67% less RAM and 50% fewer CPU cores for vSAN storage cluster hosts—bringing notable cost and efficiency benefits.

From there, the discussion shifts to availability design strategies. The trio explores the differences between application-level availability (features built directly into the app, such as database clustering or microservices patterns) and infrastructure-level availability provided by the virtualization platform. They cover when each approach makes sense, how they complement each other, and why a balanced strategy delivers the best resilience.

Whether you’re a VI admin, an architect, or an application owner, this episode breaks down the real-world tradeoffs and helps you understand where the platform should handle availability—and where the application should take the lead.

The Virtually Speaking Podcast heads to VMware Explore 2025, where Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Dale Hassinger, winner of this year’s VMware Explore Hackathon.

Dale shares the story behind his team’s winning project: a Model Contextual Protocol (MCP) server built in PowerShell that connects to VMware products and leverages AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude to automatically generate dashboards and reports. With AI doing most of the coding, their solution can transform VMware environment data into markdown tables, CSV files, or full graphical dashboards—without additional manual coding.

The team built the project in just two weeks and completed it during the intense four-hour hackathon event. Dale also gives credit to his teammates Don, Amos, Cosmin, and Willie, highlighting how the VMware community comes together through collaboration and innovation.

If you’re curious about how AI is reshaping development and what happens when creativity meets community at VMware Explore, this episode is for you.

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and Dave Linthicum sat down with Paul Lembo, CTO for Strategic Americas at Broadcom, to capture the energy and insights from the event. Paul reflects on conversations with customers, partners, and integrators, highlighting how VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is building trust by delivering on promises made the previous year.

One of the biggest crowd-pleasers was the free certification opportunities, where attendees who passed walked away with custom VCF sneakers. Paul shares why this matters for practitioners and how executive sponsorship plays a critical role in successful transformation. He also emphasizes the importance of VMware’s full-stack solutions in helping practitioners succeed, while Dave highlights VMware’s strategy of adding value without forcing customers to rip and replace existing systems.

This conversation showcases VMware by Broadcom’s continued focus on meeting customers where they are, building momentum in private cloud adoption, and enabling organizations to evolve with confidence.

At VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Chandra Prathuri, Product Management, VMware Cloud Foundation Division at Broadcom, to dive into the automation capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

The conversation kicks off with an analogy of turtles and tunnels, pointing out how slow and fragmented traditional IT operations can feel. Chandra explains how VCF 9 is designed to eliminate those bottlenecks by giving admins AWS-like self-service experiences on-premises—without the risk of surprise bills.

Key topics include:

• Automation at scale: Streamlining workflows that typically span compute, storage, network, and security teams.

• Fleet management: Lifecycle management with minimal downtime, certificate management, and desired state configuration.

• Governance and cost control: Balancing agility with oversight and financial predictability.

• Kubernetes and AI readiness: Native Kubernetes support plus GPU time-slicing to optimize workloads (e.g., inference during the day, training at night).

This episode highlights how VCF 9 helps IT teams shift from slow, ticket-based processes to a modern, automated private cloud experience.

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At VMware Explore 2025 (Day Three), hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Raj Bhat from AMD and Dave Morera from Broadcom to discuss a major announcement: VMware’s support for AMD Instinct MI350 GPUs for Private AI workloads.

Raj dives into the specs of the MI350—288GB of memory and nearly 20 petaflops of performance, packaged in a UBB form factor with eight GPUs connected together—making it ideal for running large AI models. Dave explains how this partnership expands customer hardware choices while delivering the same seamless Private AI software experience powered by VMware Cloud Foundation.

The conversation also highlights:

• How AMD’s ROCM (Radeon Open Compute Model) framework enables flexibility with AI models.

• VMware Cloud Foundation’s automation for deploying these GPUs.

• AMD’s open-source and free software approach, reducing subscription costs.

• Hardware availability through OEM partners like Supermicro and Dell, with both air-cooled and water-cooled options.

• Compatibility with both AMD and Intel CPUs.

This session showcases how VMware and AMD are working together to give customers more choice, efficiency, and scalability in Private AI.

The Virtually Speaking Podcast is back from VMware Explore 2025 with an inspiring conversation featuring Nick Kuhn.

Hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson dive into Nick’s incredible home lab journey—from starting with a single HPZ 440 workstation to building a massive 16-host environment capable of running large language models.

Nick shares how his passion for vSAN sparked the growth of his lab, how winning first place at the 2023 Explore Hackathon with an AI project fueled his expansion, and why he focused on NVIDIA RTX 3090s for the best price-performance. Today, his setup includes multiple quad-GPU systems and supports colleagues through Tanzu Platform, enabling shared workloads and demos.

The discussion explores:

• How Nick evolved his lab from hobby to professional resource

• Lessons learned with vSAN and GPU collections for AI workloads

• Running local LLMs vs. relying on costly cloud subscriptions

• The role of Tanzu in delivering a multi-tenant private AI environment

Whether you’re into home labs, AI infrastructure, or VMware tech, this episode shows how curiosity and community can scale into something extraordinary.

👉 Subscribe for more conversations from VMware Explore and beyond.

On day three of VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Drew Nielsen to explore the economic value of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).

Drew explains how customer sentiment has shifted since last year—organizations have moved past the “five stages of grief” around perpetual licensing and are now fully embracing VCF. He highlights how VCF 9 with memory tiering delivers measurable savings:

• ~40% less costly than public cloud

• ~50% less costly than building a traditional three-tier data center

The discussion dives into hardware refresh strategies, emphasizing NVMe drives as essential for memory tiering, and introduces the Private Cloud Maturity and Optimization Tool (PCMO). The PCMO now goes beyond cost modeling with new upgrade readiness features, helping customers identify blockers and prepare for VCF 9 adoption.

Whether you’re evaluating cloud costs, planning your next hardware refresh, or considering a VCF upgrade, this conversation offers practical insights on how to maximize value from your private cloud investments.

👉 If you’d like to explore your own customized cost model, VMware’s sales teams and partners can help you get started with just four simple inputs.

#VMwareExplore #VCF #PrivateCloud #Broadcom

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Nick Kuhn from VMware Tanzu during VMware Explore 2025. Nick—who also hosts Cloud Foundry Weekly—breaks down what Tanzu is today following VMware’s recent organizational changes under Broadcom.

He explains how Kubernetes components (now called VMware Kubernetes Service, or VKS) have shifted to the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) division, while Tanzu now focuses on Platform as a Service (PaaS) technologies originating from Pivotal Software. Nick highlights how Tanzu Platform complements VCF by giving developers a simplified experience: just push code and let the platform handle infrastructure complexity.

The conversation also covers:

• How Tanzu integrates with VCF components like NSX and Avi Load Balancer

• New announcements including Tanzu Platform 10.3 and VMware Tanzu Data Intelligence (a Snowflake/Databricks-like solution for VCF environments)

• Nick’s personal Koon Labs setup, which showcases Tanzu in action

Whether you’re in IT operations, development, or exploring cloud-native strategies, this episode gives clarity on how Tanzu and VCF work hand-in-hand to deliver modern application platforms.

🔔 Subscribe to Virtually Speaking for more VMware Cloud Foundation insights, expert interviews, and event coverage.

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Jad El-Zein, technologist at Broadcom, live from VMware Explore 2025.

Jad, who recently returned to the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) team after his time with the Tanzu Business Unit, shares his perspective on application modernization and how VCF 9.0 delivers a complete private cloud platform for today’s workloads. He explains why “modern apps” shouldn’t be limited to just Kubernetes or containers, but should include any application that drives business value—including VMs.

The conversation covers:

• VMware’s journey in the Kubernetes space since 2015, strengthened by the Heptio acquisition in 2018

• The rise of hybrid runtimes, where VMs and containers coexist seamlessly

• How Tanzu Mission Control integrates into VCF automation for multi-cluster management

• The role of infrastructure services in delivering application resilience

• Advice for IT leaders on approaching app modernization, including treating Kubernetes as part of the infrastructure stack

If you’re navigating your organization’s modernization journey, this episode offers practical insights on how VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 supports both traditional and modern workloads—helping IT teams build a future-ready private cloud.

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast from VMware Explore 2025, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with vSAN expert Pete Koehler to dig into the latest advancements in vSAN technology.

The conversation explores how vSAN design and operations have evolved, with networking now taking center stage over disk configurations as the platform moves fully to all-NVMe and ESA architecture. Pete Koehler shares insights on how VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) operations integrate with vSAN, highlighting the benefits of Broadcom’s unified product strategy under Hock Tan’s directive.

Key topics include:

• The surge in vSAN ESA adoption and how it’s meeting expectations

• Global deduplication at the cluster level for greater storage efficiency

• A tech preview of native S3 object storage built directly into vSAN

Whether you’re a VI admin, architect, or just curious about where VMware’s storage strategy is heading, this episode delivers valuable perspectives straight from the expert.

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson talk with Drew Nielsen from Broadcom about the major changes to VMware’s certification program following the Broadcom acquisition.

Drew breaks down how VMware has streamlined certifications from five tracks into three clear, role-specific paths for:

🔹 Implementers & Admins

🔹 Architects

🔹 Support Professionals

Key updates include:

✔️ Standardized exam pricing at $250

✔️ No required training before taking exams

✔️ Alignment of internal and customer training content for consistency

John also shares his past frustrations with the certification process—especially the high cost barrier for early-career professionals—and how this new model helps democratize access to VMware certifications.

The conversation highlights how the new program keeps content current with product releases, and Drew announces the launch of five new VCP exams at VMware Explore 2025, focused on VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF). With over 500 registrations at the event—five times higher than last year—the excitement is clear.

👉 Tune in to learn how VMware certifications are evolving to be more accessible, relevant, and impactful.

#VMwareExplore #VCF #VMwareCertification #Broadcom #VirtuallySpeakingPodcast

In this VMware Explore 2025 edition of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson talk with Raj Reddi from the United States Senate Federal Credit Union (USSFCU) and Alexis Colon, Sr. Solutions Architect at Broadcom.

Raj shares how USSFCU—serving a sensitive membership that includes Senate and Supreme Court communities—successfully upgraded from VCF 5.2 to VCF 9 with minimal downtime, despite having a lean IT team of just 22 people.

Key highlights include:

🔹 How Private AI is being leveraged for advanced fraud detection and member protection

🔹 The role of careful planning and strong partnerships in executing a smooth upgrade

🔹 Why the unified nature of VCF 9 eliminates siloed infrastructure and accelerates innovation

🔹 Lessons learned from aligning technical design with business initiatives

This conversation is proof that with the right approach and trusted partners, even small IT teams can deliver enterprise-grade innovation and resilience.

👉 Watch the full episode to hear how USSFCU modernized with VMware Cloud Foundation 9.

#VMwareExplore #VCF #VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #PrivateAI #FraudDetection #Broadcom #FinancialServices

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Vijay Ramachandran, VP of Products for Core Infrastructure at Broadcom.

Vijay shares the latest innovations in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) that are reshaping core infrastructure:

🔹 Memory Tiering – a technical feature that’s seeing surprisingly high customer engagement

🔹 vSAN Global Deduplication – cluster-wide dedupe for better efficiency and cost savings

🔹 Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) – simplifying network configuration and bringing cloud-like networking to VCF

The discussion also dives into new security and resilience capabilities, including:

✔️ Confidential Compute

✔️ Hypervisor-level EDR integration

✔️ Ransomware recovery for on-prem environments

Vijay also announces a tech preview for object storage, addressing a long-standing customer request with a built-in solution.

Looking ahead, he shares the future direction of VCF—expanding security, advancing data protection, and extending enterprise-grade VM features into the Kubernetes ecosystem to power modern apps.

👉 Don’t miss this deep dive into the future of VMware Cloud Foundation!

#VMwareExplore #VMwareCloudFoundation #VCF #VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #PrivateCloud #Broadcom

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Himanshu Singh to unpack one of the biggest announcements: Private AI is now natively built into VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF 9.0).

With this shift, customers no longer need an add-on service—all Private AI capabilities are included as part of VCF entitlement, making AI more accessible and integrated than ever.

Key highlights from the conversation:

🔹 AI-Native VCF – Private AI becomes part of the core platform for every customer.

🔹 GPU Advancements – Support for NVIDIA Blackwell B200 and RTX Pro 6000, plus new AMD Instinct MI350 series GPUs.

🔹 Networking Improvements – Enhanced Direct Path IO for NVIDIA ConnectX-7 and BlueField-3.

🔹 Data Privacy & Sovereignty – Built-in security and virtualization efficiency to run AI with confidence.

Himanshu explains how these innovations bring together modern infrastructure, advanced accelerators, and trusted security to help organizations adopt AI while maintaining full control over their data.

👉 Subscribe to the Virtually Speaking Podcast for more VMware Explore 2025 coverage and insights into the future of private cloud and AI.

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Michael Miller, IT Systems Architect at Mary Washington Healthcare.

Mike shares his inspiring career journey from working the midnight help desk shift to leading IT architecture at a healthcare organization where uptime isn’t just about business continuity—it’s about saving lives.

He walks through Mary Washington Healthcare’s modernization journey:

🔹 Transitioning from legacy infrastructure to hyperconverged VxRail

🔹 Implementing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) for automation and consistency

🔹 Leveraging automation for certificate updates and password rotations, reducing human error

🔹 Gaining real-time visibility through metrics to optimize system performance

The discussion highlights the critical role of IT in healthcare, the importance of professional implementation, and how automation and modernization with VCF directly improve system reliability—and ultimately, patient care.

👉 Don’t miss this story of IT transformation where technology and healthcare intersect.

At VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Himanshu Singh to discuss the expanded partnership between VMware and Canonical—bringing together the world’s #1 private cloud and the #1 cloud OS.

Himanshu explains how Ubuntu OS with Canonical’s 10-year enterprise support is now bundled as part of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) entitlement, simplifying operations for enterprise customers. A key highlight is the introduction of “chisel containers”—lightweight Ubuntu images optimized for specific workloads. These minimal containers reduce image size from ~200MB to ~50MB, improving efficiency and dramatically lowering vulnerabilities (their demo dropped CVEs from 16 to just 1).

The conversation also explores how the partnership addresses air-gapped environments by delivering pre-compiled virtualized GPU drivers, enabling faster, more secure AI deployments.

Whether you’re running Kubernetes, modern applications, or AI workloads, this partnership delivers a more secure, efficient, and enterprise-ready private cloud platform.

👉 Subscribe to the Virtually Speaking Podcast for more VMware Explore 2025 coverage!

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Jon Rosenson, President & COO at Expedient, to explore how Expedient is delivering VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) as a Service.

Expedient, a full-stack cloud services provider with over 25 years of experience and a VMware partner since 2008, helps clients simplify IT by managing VCF on their behalf. Jon explains how Expedient delivers:

☁️ Multi-tenant and dedicated private cloud environments powered by VCF

⚙️ End-to-end infrastructure and expertise so clients only need to subscribe

🏥 Real-world use cases in healthcare and other industries, where organizations rely on Expedient to handle IT infrastructure so they can focus on core business

🔄 Hybrid IT solutions that bridge public cloud and private cloud, including client data center acquisitions converted into multi-tenant facilities

The conversation also highlights how the Expedient–VMware by Broadcom partnership is evolving, with program changes opening the door for more customers to benefit from VCF as a Service.

👉 Watch now to learn how Expedient is helping customers rethink their cloud strategies with VMware Cloud Foundation.

#VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #VMwareExplore #VCF #CloudServices #HybridCloud #Expedient

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast from VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Dilpreet Bindra, Sr. Director of Engineering at VMware by Broadcom, to talk about the evolution of Kubernetes and VMware’s latest innovations.

Dilpreet explains how Kubernetes has moved from niche adoption to the mainstream, with 80–90% of new applications now being built on Kubernetes. He highlights how VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) stands out by empowering application teams to own and manage their own clusters—avoiding the bottlenecks of centralized “pet” clusters.

The conversation also explores:

⚡ VMware’s commitment to delivering new Kubernetes versions within eight weeks of upstream releases

🤝 VMware’s ongoing contributions to the Kubernetes ecosystem

📦 Argo CD support for Git-based deployments across both Kubernetes and VMs

📊 New monitoring capabilities in VCF 9 for tenant-specific and admin-level visibility

💬 Customer feedback, with many praising VMware for “delivering the cloud on premise” and enabling them to rethink infrastructure strategies

If you’re building modern applications or driving cloud-native transformation, this episode shows how VMware is helping organizations deliver Kubernetes with the agility of public cloud—on-premises.

👉 Watch now and subscribe to the Virtually Speaking Podcast for more insights from VMware Explore!

#VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #VMwareExplore #Kubernetes #VMwareCloudFoundation #VKS #ArgoCD

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast recorded at VMware Explore 2025, hosts Pete Flecha and Dave Linthicum sit down with Johan van Amersfoort from ITQ to discuss ITQ’s long-standing partnership with VMware by Broadcom and their latest innovation for AI.

Johan introduces ITQ’s new GPU Sizer tool for VMware Private AI Foundation, designed to make GPU infrastructure sizing for AI workloads simple and accurate. By connecting directly to HuggingFace to retrieve model parameters, the tool requires only the model name and expected concurrent sessions — automating what was once a complex process.

The discussion also covers:

🤝 ITQ’s 15-year journey as one of VMware’s top five global partners

🧠 How ITQ has been implementing AI solutions since 2018

👥 Parallels between AI adoption and end-user computing experiences

🔧 The potential for GPU Sizer to integrate into automation workflows for more efficient resource management

📢 The announcement that ITQ is now an official partner for VMware Private AI Foundation

If you’re exploring how to size, deploy, and manage GPU resources for AI applications, this conversation is packed with practical insights.

👉 Watch now and subscribe to the Virtually Speaking Podcast for more expert discussions from VMware Explore!

#VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #VMwareExplore #PrivateAI #GPU #ITQ #VMwareCloudFoundation