Today, AI is everywhere, and everyone wants a VM with a GPU adapter to deploy/test/play with AI/ML. Although it is not a problem to add a PCI device to the VM (whole GPU), sometimes it can be overkill.
For example, running a small model requires only a small amount of GPU memory, while our server is equipped with modern NVIDIA H200, B200, or even B300 GPUs that have a large amount of memory.
And this is where vGPU comes into play. vGPU allows us to divide a GPU into smaller pieces and share it among a number of VMs located on the host.
In this article, we will focus on how to configure ESXi hosts to run VMs with the vGPU support in vSphere 8.0 Update 3.
In the last few months, many changes happened to VMware certifications, and in this short post, I want to cover those changes.
First and foremost: since October 31, legacy certifications are no longer available, which means we cannot schedule VCP-DCV or VCAP-Design exams anymore.
What about the current available certification? As usual, we can get all the information from the VMware certification page.
Nowadays, the certification focuses on two products: primarily on VMware Cloud Foundation and, in addition, on VMware vSphere Foundation.
Three levels of certification are available: Professional, Advanced-Professional, and Expert.
There are three types of professional exams:
Administration – focused on administrating and implementing the product;
Support – focused on troubleshooting;
Architect – focused on designing the solution.
While administration and support are available for VCF and VVF products, the architect exam is available only for the VCF solution stack.
In total, we have five professional-level exams:
VMware Certified Professional – VMware vSphere Foundation Support (2V0-18.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Support (2V0-15.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Professional – VMware vSphere Foundation Administrator (2V0-16.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator (2V0-17.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation Architect (2V0-13.25), blueprint.
If you are using only the vSphere Foundation stack, you can start with 2V0-16.25 and 2V0-18.25. For VCF administrators, the starting point could be the 2V0-17.25 and 2V0-15.25 exams. Next is to take the Architect exam 2V0-13.25; I assume it’s kind of like the VCAP-Design exam.
The next step is four advanced-professional exams:
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 vSphere Kubernetes Service (3V0-24.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Automation (3V0-21.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations (3V0-22.25), blueprint;
VMware Certified Advanced Professional – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Storage (3V0-23.25), blueprint.
You can see by the name that each advanced-level exam focused on a specified topic – Kubernetes, Automation, or Operations, and vSphere storage, primarily vSAN.
Each professional and advanced exam costs $250, consists of 60 questions, has a passing score of 300 (as usual), and requires 135 minutes to clear.
The last step is VCDX – VMware Certified Distinguished Expert. – What? Where is the “Design Expert”? Currently, there is limited information available on the internet, aside from this post and the landing page.
Recently I’ve been asked to deploy a “Monster VM” with 8 H200 GPUs aboard. Although everything looks simple, and there weren’t any problems with VMs with small vGPUs, the first thing I faced after running such a large VM was an error:
Error message from esxi-01: The firmware could not allocate 50331648 KB of PCI MMIO. Increase the size of PCI MMIO and try again.
MMIO size should be calculated based on the number and type of passthrough devices attached to the VM.
According to the doc above, each passthrough NVIDIA H100 (or H200) GPU requires 128 GB of MMIO space.
You can obtain more information about calculating the MMIO size in KB 323402. Please refer to the example, which explains how to calculate MMIO size based on the GPU size.
After adjusting MMIO settings, the VM will boot successfully.
Great news: now you can book one exam for free using the NCPMCAEUC610 voucher during checkout. It could be NCP-MCA or NCP-EUC. The voucher is valid only for one exam of your choice and only for the first 250 participants. So, hurry!
In the previous articles, we updated VMware Cloud Foundation Operations and vCenter Server to version 9.0.1, and just to complete the series, I will add one more post about updating vSphere hosts using a single-cluster image.
Although the overall procedure for updating is the same and simple, you may have heard of or even faced a new token-based authentication to download updates from the Broadcom repositories, and in this article, I will cover this moment too.
In the previous article, we updated VMware Cloud Foundation Operations to version 9.0.1 and now it is time to update vCenter Server.
Although the overall procedure for updating is the same and simple, as you may have heard, or even experienced, there is a new token-based authentication to download updates from the Broadcom repositories, and in this article, I will cover this moment too.
Veeam just dropped a new KB, related to three critical security fixes: CVE-2025-48983, CVSS v3.1 Score: 9.9: A vulnerability in the Mount service of Veeam Backup & Replication, which allows for remote code execution (RCE) on the Backup infrastructure hosts by an authenticated domain user.
CVE-2025-48984, CVSS v3.1 Score: 9.9: A vulnerability allowing remote code execution (RCE) on the Backup Server by an authenticated domain user.
Both vulnerabilities only impact domain-joined Veeam Backup & Replication v12.
The vulnerabilities affected all versions of Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3.2.3617 and earlier builds and were fixed in the latest VBR release, 12.3.2.4165, so consider updating as soon as possible.
One vulnerability is related to the Veeam agent for MS Windows. CVE-2025-48982, CVSS v3.1 Score:7.3: This vulnerability in Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows allows for Local Privilege Escalation if a system administrator is tricked into restoring a malicious file.
Consider updating your Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows to version 6.3.2.1302.
With the release of version 9.0.1 (this is a minor update, not a major one like Update 1) of VCF components, it is good to cover the update procedure of the key VCF component – VMware Cloud Foundation Operations.
In this short article we will walk though this process.
As I wrote earlier, Nutanix released a new NCP certification focused on the Nutanix AI product called Nutanix Certified Professional–Artificial Intelligence (NCP-AI).
From now on, you can schedule this exam with an appointment date starting Nov. 11, and the great news is that it is free for the first 250 participants. Just use NCPAINEWFREE code during checkout.
Nutanix announcedan update of two certifications: Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) and Nutanix Certified Professional – End User Computing (NCP-EUC) were updated to version 6.10.
Nutanix Certified Professional – Multicloud Automation (NCP-MCA) – measures your abilities in Nutanix automation using Self-Service and X-Play. You can find a blueprint guide here.
Nutanix Certified Professional – End User Computing (NCP-EUC) – validates your skills in managing end-user computing environments in Nutanix clusters using Citrix or Omnissa. You can find a blueprint guidehere.
As usual, the beta exams are completely free for the first 250 participants; simply use the following discounts during checkout: NCPMCA610BETA for the NCP-MCA exam and NCPEUC610BETA for the NCP-EUC exam. You can schedule exams from the Nutanix University. Thefinal date to take the test is Oct 5, 2025.
Notice: After taking a beta exam, you won’t receive your results immediately. Results typically appear 1.5 or 2 months after the beta exam period concludes.
