Homelab: VCF 9 in a box

Like many people running a homelab, I used William Lam’s excellent VCF starting page as the foundation to build my VCF 9 lab. => link

The goal of this post is not to repeat his blog, but to document the things I did differently, the parts that didn’t work as expected, and the tweaks required to get everything running smoothly in a compact 2-node homelab setup.

1. Hardware BOM

Luckily, I purchased most of this hardware before memory prices went completely insane 😅

Hardware	Type	Price	Website
Compute	MINIS FORUM MS-A2 AMD Ryzen 9 9955HX	935€ x2	Amazon
Memory	Crucial 128GB DDR5 RAM Kit (2x64GB)	443€ x2	Amazon
ESXi Boot Disk	SAMSUNG 990 EVO Plus 1TB	85€ x2	Amazon
Memory Tiering Disk	Samsung SSD 990 Pro NVME 1TB	108€ x2	Amazon
VSAN Disk	Samsung 990 EVO PLUS 2TB M.2 SSD	129€ x2	Megekko
Rack	DeskPi RackMate T2 Rackmount	231€ x2	Amazon
Rack Shelf	GeeekPi 1U Rack Shelf	27€ x3	Amazon

2. Licensing your VCF instance

You have two realistic options to license VCF for a homelab.

Option 1 – vExpert (Free)

Becoming a vExpert gives you access to VCF licenses.
Joining the vExpert community has been one of the best things that happened to me professionally — expanding my network, learning from incredibly smart people worldwide, and pushing me to a higher level both personally and professionally.

Option 2 – VMUG Advantage ($210)

You can also purchase a VMUG Advantage membership:
👉 https://www.vmug.com/membership/vmug-advantage-membership/

This gives you:

A 128-core VCF license
Discounts on training and certifications

⚠️ Requirement:
At the time of writing, you need either the VCF-Admin or VCF-Architect certification to obtain the VCF licenses. This requirement may change in the future.

3. Installation steps

IP configuration

FQDN	IP Address	Function
dc01.vkasaert.com	10.10.10.10	DNS Server
esx30.vkasaert.com	10.10.20.30	Physical ESXi Host 1
esx31.vkasaert.com	10.10.20.31	Physical ESXi Host 2
sddcm.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.40	VCF Installer / SDDC Manager
vc-vcf.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.41	Management Domain vCenter
nsx01a.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.42	NSX Manager node
nsx01.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.43	NSX Manager VIP
opspn01.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.44	Operations
opsfm.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.45	Operations Fleet Manager
opscp01.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.46	Operations Cloud Proxy
auto.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.47 – 48	VCF Automation
edge01a.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.49	NSX Edge 1a
edge01b.vkasaert.com	10.10.30.50	NSX Edge 1b

3.1 Install ESXi

The MS-A2 systems already shipped with the latest firmware, so I didn’t need to update it.
However, definitely check William Lam’s firmware blog post, as it highlights several BIOS settings that must be adjusted.

For ESXi installation:

Update KS.CFG to match your disk layout
Update BOOT.CFG to ensure the correct KS file is used

After installation, verify that Memory Tiering is active.
I installed 128GB of physical RAM per node, so ESXi should report ~256GB available memory once tiering is active.

3.2 Enable SSH Access to SDDC Manager

Edit the SSH configuration => vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Change PermitRootLogin to yes

Reboot the SDDC Manager.
After the reboot, SSH access will be available.

3.3 Enable 2-Node Deployment

William’s script didn’t work for me, but the manual changes are minimal.

Edit /home/vcf/feature.properties and add the entries below
feature.vcf.internal.single.host.domain = true feature.vcf.vgl-29121.single.host.domain = true feature.vcf.vgl-43370.vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim = true

Edit /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application.properties and add the entries below
enable.speed.of.physical.nics.validation = false vsan.esa.sddc.managed.disk.claim = true

Restart SDDC services:
/opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh