Virtually Speaking Podcast

At KubeCon 2026 in Amsterdam, Jad El-Zein and John Nicholson sit down with Duffie Cooley, Field CTO at Isovalent, to talk about eBPF, Cilium, Kubernetes networking, and the growing partnership between Isovalent and VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS).

The conversation dives into how Cilium integrates with VKS as a day-zero add-on, how eBPF changes networking and observability inside Kubernetes, and why technologies like BGP, ECMP, and kube-proxy replacement matter for scalable modern platforms.

Duffie also explains how Isovalent and VMware networking strategies complement each other, how enterprise capabilities extend beyond open source Cilium, and why add-on ecosystems are becoming critical for platform engineering teams operating Kubernetes at scale.

If you’re building modern Kubernetes platforms, exploring VKS, or trying to simplify networking and security operations, this episode is packed with practical insights from one of the pioneers behind the technology.

Guest: Duffie Cooley, Field CTO – Isovalent

Hosts: Jad El-Zein & John Nicholson

Event: KubeCon 2026 – Amsterdam

etworking has traditionally been one of the biggest barriers to private cloud agility. In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Dimitri Desmidt from the VMware Cloud Foundation Networking team to explore how VCF Networking simplifies network operations in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.

The discussion covers how VPCs, connectivity policies, IP Address Management (IPAM) integration, and network automation allow infrastructure teams to provision networking services directly from vCenter without requiring deep networking expertise or constant coordination with network administrators.

Dimitri walks through real-world examples showing how VCF Networking delivers self-service networking, multi-tenancy, simplified application isolation, and integrated network services while preserving the flexibility and scale required by modern private cloud environments.

If you’ve ever wanted networking to be as easy to consume as compute and storage, this episode is for you.

Troubleshooting complex IT environments isn’t just about technology, it’s about people, process, and collaboration.

Recorded at VMware Connect 2026, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Kim Delgado and Mandy Bosco-Wilson (better known as Team Kandy) to discuss collaborative troubleshooting methodologies that help organizations solve problems faster and more effectively.

The conversation explores common troubleshooting anti-patterns, the importance of psychological safety, blameless inquiry, scientific troubleshooting methods, and real-world examples of complex issues spanning vSAN, Kubernetes, Cloud Native Storage, networking, and infrastructure operations.

Kim and Mandy share stories from the field, including how a seemingly simple issue bounced between multiple support teams before collaborative troubleshooting uncovered the true root cause. They also discuss strategies for handling multi-vendor incidents, avoiding siloed thinking, and creating environments where everyone can contribute to finding solutions.

Whether you’re a VMware administrator, platform engineer, SRE, architect, or IT operations leader, this episode offers practical techniques you can apply to your own troubleshooting processes.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (and 9.1) is generating a lot of excitement, but many organizations are still operating with assumptions based on older VCF releases.

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, Pete Flecha and John Nicholson sit down with Bill Oyler from Presidio to separate fact from fiction and discuss what customers are actually experiencing as they adopt VMware Cloud Foundation 9.

Bill shares lessons learned from customer migrations, including brownfield convergences, external storage support, infrastructure readiness assessments, and some of the most common upgrade pitfalls organizations encounter. The conversation covers everything from Enhanced Linked Mode and distributed switches to certificates, firewall rules, hardware compatibility, and practical planning considerations for successful VCF 9 adoption.

Whether you’re evaluating VMware Cloud Foundation, preparing for a migration, or already planning your upgrade, this episode provides valuable insights from real-world customer engagements and deployments.

#VirtuallySpeakingPodcast #VMware #VMwareCloudFoundation #VCF9 #VMUG #PrivateCloud #vSphere #vSAN #Broadcom

In this episode of the Virtually Speaking Podcast, we’re live from VMUG Connect in Minneapolis with Brock Peterson and Dale Hassinger from Broadcom for a conversation about community, blogging, automation, AI, and career growth.

Brock and Dale share how community involvement, technical blogging, VMUG participation, hackathons, and simply putting your work out into the world can create real career opportunities. Dale talks about his journey from customer and community contributor to Broadcom employee, while Broc explains why blogs still matter as practical, reusable technical content for customers and practitioners.

The conversation also explores how AI is changing the way infrastructure teams work, from troubleshooting YAML and building automation to creating apps, dashboards, and AI-driven home lab workflows. Whether you’re looking to grow your career, start blogging, present at a VMUG, or experiment with AI and automation, this episode is packed with practical encouragement from two long-time community contributors.give me some alternate titles.

Links Mentioned

Brock's Blog: https://www.brockpeterson.com/

Dale's Blog: https://www.vcrocs.info/