Sunday, August 30th | 9:30a.m.

What do you do when you are told to move a data center in six months? This session shares a real-world case study of relocating active workloads between data centers hundreds of miles apart while managing and consolidating multiple VMware vCenter® solutions, nearly 200 hosts, storage, backups, network changes, licensing, and tight timelines. And what do you do with the added challenge of simultaneously absorbing a newly acquired company running Hyper-V and convert 50 VMs to VMware software? Attendees will hear what worked, what broke, and what was learned about DNS, planning, patience, cross-team partnership, and executing a phased migration with minimal disruption.

Monday, August 31st | 12:30 p.m.

For many, the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification is the first step in their certification journey. Now, there are several new VMware Cloud Foundation® certifications available for you to take. Join experts from around the world who have gone through the new VMware Certified Professional - VMware Cloud Foundation Administrator (VCP-VCF) process and discover what the certification can do for you and your career. Discover how all that extra content fits into a single exam, learn where to go to study for it, and see how VMUG Advantage provides you with benefits before and after you get certified.

Monday, August 31st | 12:45p.m.

As organizations modernize, real success means delivering measurable business value, faster time-to-market, and reduced operational complexity. This session steps away from product pitches to showcase the real-world triumphs of trailblazing enterprises that transitioned to VMware vSphere® Kubernetes Service (VMware VKS). Hear firsthand from IT leaders about their transformation journeys. Discover how they consolidated VMs and cloud-native containers onto a single VMware Cloud Foundation® (VCF) control plane to drastically cut total cost of ownership, and how they leveraged VMware VKS to empower platform engineering teams, deploying developer environments quickly while maintaining governance. Learn how these organizations overcame hurdles, achieved massive efficiencies, and turned infrastructure into a launchpad for innovation.

Tuesday, September 1st | 9:30a.m.

During this session, attendees will learn the basics of different types of loops they can use when writing PowerCLI scripts. Important topics include: when to use specific loops, how to break out of loops, and how to avoid a never ending loop. Determining the most efficient loop type can be difficult, either from a performance or code readability perspective. We will examine a few scenarios that will help you understand when and where to choose the specific types of PowerShell loops. This presentation will have plenty of live code examples interacting with APIs and custom functions to ensure the attendees can see the real-world application of these PowerShell tools. Attendees can expect to leave the session with PowerShell knowledge they can apply immediately to their existing scripts.

Tuesday, September 1st | 10:30a.m.

The role of a VMware administrator has expanded beyond simple virtualization management. As VMware environments become more complex, the training and knowledge required to manage their environment is effectively more complex. Today, the environments encompass cloud integration, automation, security hardening, and performance optimization. This session will discuss social media experts' sites available to address these diverse needs. To ensure a robust, efficient, and secure virtual environment—and navigate this complexity—requires a suite of powerful tools, capable of streamlining processes, enhancing system visibility, and optimizing resource utilization.

Tuesday, September 1st | 3:00p.m. | The Hub Theater

As organizations accelerate the adoption of AI across hybrid and private cloud platforms, security architectures must evolve to address new risks introduced by data-intensive pipelines, model lifecycles, and distributed inference services. This session explores how AI security principles can be operationalized within VMware Cloud Foundation® (VCF). You will learn how to protect sensitive datasets, secure model training pipelines, enforce Zero-Trust segmentation for GPU-accelerated workloads, and strengthen compliance posture across the AI lifecycle. The presentation also examines emerging risks such as model poisoning, data leakage, and supply-chain vulnerabilities in AI infrastructure—and demonstrates how VCF’s integrated security architecture helps mitigate them.

Tuesday, September 1st | 3:00p.m.

Let’s be honest — VMware Cloud Foundation® (VCF) 9 is a beast when it comes to resource requirements. Which makes running it in a home lab a real challenge. In this session, we will look at how to design a functional VCF 9 lab within constrained hardware limits. Rather than focusing on installation steps, we will cover architectural decisions such as nested deployments, minimal footprint configurations, storage and networking simplifications, and resource optimization techniques. We will also discuss component behavior under constrained conditions and common failure scenarios, including the challenges that you need to face while testing the beta versions.

Wednesday, September 2nd | 10:15a.m.

Observability data is rich, but quickly extracting insights remains a challenge. This session introduces a new approach: chatting directly with your metrics and logs using agentic infrastructure and operations. Learn how custom Model Context Protocols (MCPs) and intelligent agents can interface with your observability stack in VMware Cloud Foundation®, enabling natural language queries, automated analysis, and guided troubleshooting. We will explore how to build secure, self-managed integrations that turn telemetry into actionable insights in real time. Through practical examples and demos, see how conversational operations can accelerate resolution, reduce toil, and unlock the full value of your observability data.

Wednesday, September 2nd | 12:30p.m. | The Hub Theater

Unblock the enterprise utility of large language models (LLMs) by safely connecting them to private data, tools, and workflows. This session details a reference architecture for deploying operational AI services using the Model Context Protocol (MCP) on VMware Cloud Foundation® (VCF) 9. We explore how MCP standardizes access, while VCF 9 Private AI Services provide the secure, scalable runtime, data indexing, and governance framework. Learn to build and secure mission-critical AI agents, transforming isolated model usage into governed, production-ready copilots for IT operations and platform engineering. We cover architecture, security warnings, and a 90-day pilot roadmap for operationalizing trusted enterprise AI.

Wednesday, September 2nd | 1:30p.m. | The Hub Theater

• • Performance validated on real workloads
• • Predictable economics that scale
• • Sovereignty built in by design

Wednesday, September 2nd | 2:30p.m.

Back by popular demand, the Wondernerd returns—cape, tea, and keyboard in tow—to turn GPU ops from tedious repetition into scripted heroics. We will explore the new GPU methods in VMware Cloud Foundation®, show practical PowerShell and Python examples, and demo live retrieval and automation of GPU and VM metadata. Expect runnable snippets, demo‑driven troubleshooting, and well‑timed IT humor (bring your cape and favorite IDE). Bonus: Practical community resources and tips for vExpert and VMUG Advantage members to accelerate learning and automation adoption. Walk away with reusable scripts, a safety checklist for production use, and at least one cape‑worthy punchline.

Wednesday, September 2nd | 3:00p.m. | The Hub Theater

In this fast-paced, data-driven session, VMUG shares what its community of practitioners is genuinely experiencing as the VMware landscape evolves. From survey data to live audience reactions, we'll resurface the trends, the workarounds, and the hard questions people are wrestling with right now – and turn them into clear, actionable guidance. If you're a VMware software admin or architect trying to stay ahead, this session is built for you.