Unexplored Territory

Hosted by Duncan Epping

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Episodes

128

Latest episode

Oct 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

The Unexplored Territory Podcast takes you deep into the world of datacenters and cloud (native) tech, with a special spotlight on VMware, Broadcom, and everything happening in the ecosystem. Hosted by Duncan Epping, blogger at Yellow-Bricks.com, and co-author of the vSphere Clustering and vSAN Deep Dive books! Each episode brings on top industry experts to unpack the latest trends, share real-world insights, and talk about what’s next in the world of enterprise IT.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

October 14, 202623 min

#128 - Live from ITQon, in the VCF trenches, and announcing ITQ Cloud Platform!

I was invited to present a session at ITQon last month, and I decided to bring my portable podcast recording gear to record a few clips with various people from ITQ. As most of the attendees work with VMware solutions and services on a daily basis, I wanted to talk about things they've implemented, seen, and/or experienced. One thing I want to emphasize, Jeff announced the ITQ Cloud Platform. A managed VCF solution leveraging hardware from local bare metal providers. Available in the Netherlands first, but branching out to other European countries fast. Providing a true sovereign VCF based private cloud platform to all customers! As mentioned in the intro, this episode is not sponsored by ITQ and neither am I affiliated in any shape or form. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Johan, Jeff, Toine, DJ, Florian, and Paul!

September 27, 202622 min

#127 - Drew Nielsen introducing the new VCDX program!

I bumped into Drew Nielsen at Explore in Las Vegas and we briefly discussed the overhauled VCDX Program. Not only did the name change from VMware Certified Design Expert to VMware Certified Distinguished Expert , the whole program has been overhauled with job specific tracks for the various personas. Where the focus was on architects in the past, Broadcom now made the top tier certificationt track accessible for support engineers, administrators, and of course still for architects. Besides sharing the details of the renewed VCDX program, Drew also discusses what has changed for the VCAP exams. If you are interested in getting certified, this is a must listen! Oh, and before I forget, the price of the VCDX exam has been lowered to 250 USD from 995 (and 3000 USD before that).

September 6, 202638 min

#126 - VMware Explore Las Vegas 2026!

I flew out to Las Vegas this week to present a few sessions at Explore 2026! I brought my mobile podcast recording kit for the first time and decided to record some clips with various people I ran into at the event. I hope you appreciate the conversations with folks like Alan Renouf, Pete Flecha, William Lam, Frank Denneman, and many more! Make sure to watch some of the recordings of the Explore sessions my guests hosted: Frank's Models in Minutes Alan and William's Tips and Tricks for running 9.1 in your homelab Iwan's Full Stack Troubleshooting Brad's Full Stack Engineering Duncan's Four Prod Ready VCF 9.1 Storage Capabilities Keith's From Gatekeeper to Enabler

August 16, 202630 min

#125 - Announcing the VCF Inspector Fling featuring Alan Renouf!

I noticed a blog post about a new fling called VCF Inspector last week, so I had to invite the author Alan Renouf to the show to talk us through it. VCF Inspector, in my opinion, is one of those tools that will be very valuable for everyone working with VCF, but especially for consultants and people managing many different environments. Just listen to the episode, and download the tool via the link in the blog post !

August 2, 202635 min

#124 - VMware Explore 2026, the podcast!

For me personally, VMware Explore is the event of the year and a very exciting (and stressful) time. I asked Nikki Sherin from the Explore team to talk us through what we can expect at Explore 2026, and I also asked my good friends William Lam, Alan Renouf, and Pete Flecha to explain to us what excites them most about the event. It was a fantastic conversation and I am definitely looking forward to meeting up with everyone at the event again. My Favorite Sessions: ⁠ https://event.vmware.com/my/widget/vmware/explore2026lv/1784640936449001Ii9L ⁠ Hackathon: https://blogs.vmware.com/code/2026/06/26/vmwarecode-hackathon-for-explore-las-vegas/ Schedule Builder: https://event.vmware.com/flow/vmware/explore2026lv/content Living on the edge - https://event.vmware.com/flow/vmware/explore2026lv/content/page/catalog?tab.sessioncatalogtabs=1747347809815001igUo&search=CLOB1260LV

July 19, 202632 min

#123 - Announcing the 5th edition of the IT Ops mgmt guidebook

For this episode I invited Iwan Rahabok to talk us through the recent announcement of the 5th edition of the IT Ops Management Guidebook. As I mentioned during this episode, this isn't just a book, this is a Resource Kit! What changed? 1000+ pages, and 4 parts. Lots of additional content & corrections compared to the 4th edition 2 years ago. Deeper. More technical. Leveling up to support private cloud architect. A booklet written for higher up management chain. New troubleshooting flows. Done in DrawIO so you can tailor for your needs Two brand new calculators VCF Ops vCommunity adapters . Built by Onur An agentic AI webiste: https://isvara.io/ built by Samir . What does not change: Still free. Still editable. So you can customize to your own organisation Download in the usual place: https://broadcom.ent.box.com/v/OpsYourWorld

July 5, 202637 min

#122 - Exploring the world of VCF Edge and Zero Touch Provisioning with Dhruv Tyagi

I read a few articles the last couple of months on the topic of VCF Edge by Dhruv Tyagi , and with the 9.1 release there were a couple of interesting posts about Zero Touch Provisioning, so it was time to invite him to the podcast and explore what VCF Edge is all about. Of course we also touch on things like Zero Touch Provisioning and how it helps customers deploy and manage thousands of hosts across countless locations. A very unique solution for a very specific problem! Want to know more, these were some of the documents, blogs, and demos discussed during this episode: VCF Edge: VCF Edge Design Library VCF Edge Design Blueprint for Manufacturing VCF Edge Design Blueprint for Defense ZTP: Blog - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VMware Cloud Foundation Edge 9.1 Demo Video - Zero Touch Provisioning: Activating Edge Sites with VCF Edge 9.1 Tech Docs for ZTP

June 21, 202646 min

#121 - Operational, Disaster, and Ransomware Recovery using VCF Protection and Recovery featuring Velina Krasteva!

With VCF 9.1 the name of VMware Live Recovery, or Site Recovery Manager, seems to have changed to VCF Protection and Recovery. In this episode Velina explains how this platform provides administrators the ability to recover workloads from different types of scenarios. Whether you deleted a VM (operational recovery), lost a whole datacenter (disaster recovery), or had a security breach and found data encrypted (ransomware recovery), VCF Protection and Recovery has an end-to-end solution for you! Discussed topics: Ransomware Recovery Demo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFjSCyLP384 Cyber resilience in 9.1 - https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/announcing-vcf-9-1-modern-private-cloud-built-for-efficiency-and-resilience/

June 7, 202628 min

#120 - Announcing VCF Native S3 Object Storage, featuring Rakesh!

VCF Native S3 Object Storage is a major feature that was announced with VCF 9.1. Pete Koehler introduced it in episode 118 and I wanted to explore what it is all about in this episode with Rakesh. Rakesh goes over what was announced with 9.1, what the timelines look like, discusses the use cases for the platform, and reveals what you can expect in the (near) future. All the topics and links discussed can be found here: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/13/native-s3-compatible-object-storage-in-vmware-vsan-for-vcf-9-1/ https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/announcing_vsan_in_vcf_9-1/ Disclaimer : VCF Native S3 Object Storage has not been released yet, it has only been announced. As Rakesh has mentioned, the plan is to release it in a future patch release as a tech preview, followed by an "MVP" release after that. As always, there's no commitment to any timeline or delivery of any feature at this stage.

May 24, 202651 min

#119 - All things (VCF 9.1) security featuring Bob Plankers!

Recently I realized I hadn't had Bob Plankers on the show yet, so it was time to get him to join the show and talk all things security. Bob goes over all the various features we introduced related to security in VCF 9.1, and also gives a quick overview of what we've had available in VCF and vSphere for decades now. All the topics and links discussed can be found here: https://github.com/vmware/vcf-security-and-compliance-guidelines https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/06/confidential-computing-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/ https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2025/08/05/security-vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0/ https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/platform-security-vcf-9-1/