The wait is over — as of today, VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 is generally available. In a nutshell, the goal of VCF 9.0 is to bring the public cloud experience to on-premises as a unified private cloud platform. Thus, it focusses on:

  • Modern infrastructure
    • Software defined
    • Automated
    • Simpler Operations
    • Extendable
  • Unified cloud experience
    • Self-service
    • All applications
    • Private AI
  • Security and resilience
    • Prevention
    • Compliance
    • Faster recovery

Let’s have a quick Look on what’s new with this major release.

In VCF 9.0 architecture, several new concepts have been introduced.

A VCF private cloud is the top level of management and consumption for the underlying SDDC resources. It contains one or more VCF fleets:

A VCF fleet is managed by a single set of fleet-level management compontents. A VCF fleet consists of:

  • 1x VCF Operations
  • 1x VCF Automation
  • 1+ VCF instances

A VCF instance delivers the resources such as compute, storage, networking. It consists of a management domain and one or more workload domains.

In VCF installation, a new installer has been introduced. Cloud Builder is gone, VCF or a VCF fleet is now deployed or expanded through the VCF Installer. You can easily deploy two different Deployment models using the Installer wizard:

  • Simple: 1 NSX Manager node, 1 VCF Operations, 1 VCF Automation nodenode,
  • High Availability: 3 NSX Manager nodes, 3 VCF Operations nodes, 3 VCF Automation nodes

The following changes have been made to the component structure:

VCF 5.xVCF 9.0
VMware Cloud BuilderVCF Installer
SDDC ManagerSDDC Manager (seems to be there only for backwards compatibility).
Functionality moved to VCF Operations
Aria OperationsVCF Operations
vIDMVCF Identity Broker

In VCF 9.0 the licensing model has been simplified and centralized through VCF Operations.

VCF 5.xVCF 9.0
License keyLicense file
License per componentSingle license for all components
Does not require usage dataRequires usage data
No central visibility or controlCentral consumption visibility and control
Manual reactivation on renewalAutomated reactivation on renewal
Major version specificNo more licenses upgrades or downgrades
Managed in Broadcom Support PortalManged in VCF Business Services console
60 day evaluation period90 day evaluation period
Per host licensingPer vCenter licensing

VCF 9.0 provides several enhancements on the Compute layer:

  • Memory optimization with NVMe
  • Increased uptime for AI/ML workloads
    • Performance improvements from 10 Gbps to 60 Gbps
    • Stun time decreased to less than 1 s for 8 GB vGPU profile
  • Mixed vendor clusters
    • Assign additional images manually or automatically
    • Multiple hardware support managers per cluster image
    • Create up to four additional images per cluster image
    • Support multiple server models in a single cluster image
  • Virtualized hardware improvements, e.g. up to 960 vCPU
  • Decoupling of Supervisor updates from vCenter
    • Update the Supervisor control plane independently of vCenter Server
  • Live patching enhancements
    • Live Patch is extended to VMkernel, user-space, and NSX components
    • ESXi service restarts are required but they are nondisruptive
    • Fast suspend-resume remediates VMs
    • No evacuation is required

VCF 9.0 provides the following storage enhancements

  • Network traffic separation for vSAN storage clusters
    • vSAN cluster traffic is isolated from vSphere clusters that access the datastore on the vSAN storage cluster
    • Dedicated VMkernel interfaces for
      • vSAN cluster traffic
      • vSphere Client clusters mounting vSAN storage cluster datastore
  • Enhanced scalability with vSAN file services
  • Enhanced flexibility, uptime, and operational tasks for stretched clusters
    • Support for vSAN storage clusters and new site maintenance and site takeover capabilities

VCF 9.0 networking enhancements include:

  • Clear role definition that allows self-service networking in VPCs
  • vCenter UI workflow for deploying NSX edges
  • High performance switching called Enhanced Data Path (EDP) is enabled by default. It provides a 50-70% increase in performance for both bandwidth and packets per second

What’s new in VCF Operations

VCF Operations has been enhanced by several features that work towards its classical operations focus and the new fleet management. The VCF fleet management incorporates capabilities from both SDDC Manager and Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager:

  • Identity and access
  • Certificate management
  • Password management
  • Tag management
  • Configuration drift
  • Lifecycle management

What’s new in VCF Automation