Mohammad Siddiqui

newsletter

A new home for this publication

On owning your platform, and what comes next. This publication now lives at mohammadsiddiqui.com my own domain, running on Ghost. It is a move I had been considering for a while, and I am glad I made it. Here is why it matters, and what changes from here. The

architecture

VCF 9.1: An Architect's Field Guide to the Design Changes That Matter

Twenty technology and topology updates in VCF 9.1, read through the HLD/LLD lens what actually changes in your sizing, your fault domains, your BoMs, and your patch cycles.

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VMSA-2026-0006 for the vSphere 8 Estate ESXi and vCenter 8.0 U3k, and the Live-Patch Catch

The 29 July advisory reaches vSphere 8: ESXi 8.0 U3k resolves CVE-2026-47876 live-patchable and vCenter 8.0 U3k closes two more.

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Security Express Patches for VCF and VVF 9.0.2 and the ESX Fix Is Live-Patchable

Five CVEs resolved across ESX and vCenter under VMSA-2026-0006, released 29 July. The detail that matters operationally: the ESX patch applies without reboot or evacuation

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VMSA-2026-0006 on the 9.1 Stream One vCenter Quick Patch and You’re Done

The same 29 July advisory that patched three components on 9.0.2 asks exactly one thing of VCF and VVF 9.1 estates: vCenter 9.1.0.0300, resolving CVE-2026-59310.

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Baselines Are on Borrowed Time The Architect’s Guide to Moving ESXi Patching to vLCM Images

Baseline-based host patching has been deprecated since vSphere 8.0 and cannot carry you into vSphere 9.

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STIG Compliance in VCF 9.1 What DoD Hardening Standards Mean for Every Regulated Estate

Broadcom’s July post on Security Technical Implementation Guides lands squarely in defence territory but the compliance-as-operations model it describes is exactly where APRA and DORA are heading.

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Shared VMDK Expansion on vSAN in VCF 9.1: Retiring the Last Outage Window for Clustered Applications

WSFC and clustered database estates have carried a storage growth constraint through every platform generation. VCF 9.1 removes it shared VMDKs expand online.

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Confidential Computing GA in VCF 9.1 Data-in-Use Protection as a Placement Attribute

Intel TDX and AMD SEV-SNP reach general availability, Quick Boot returns on CC-active hosts, and VCF Operations profiles host capability automatically.

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Avi Load Balancing in VCF 9.1 Self-Service Delivery and the First LB Features Built for Agentic AI

Automated load balancing within guardrails on one front; MCP session persistence, JWT authentication, and tool RBAC on the other. The load balancing layer catches up with where the platform is going.

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The UniSuper Podcast Worth Re-Listening to in 2026 With the Benefit of Hindsight

In late 2023, UniSuper’s infrastructure lead told the story of an 80/20 cloud transformation driven by regulatory pressure.

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Memory Tiering What-If Analysis in VCF Operations 9.1 Capacity Engineering with Evidence

The 40% TCO claim is only as good as the word ‘suitable.’ What-If Analysis models NVMe Memory Tiering against your actual telemetry before you commit and that changes how the business case gets made.