VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 has been released a few weeks ago. It introduces a more cloud-like, scalable, and intent-driven architecture for building and operating private cloud environments. Rather than thinking only in terms of vCenter servers, clusters, and management domains, VCF 9.0 encourages a layered architectural model built around constructs such as Private Cloud, Fleet, and Instance.

This article breaks down those core components and explains how they work together to deliver a modern private cloud platform.

Private Cloud Constructs

At a high level, VMware Cloud Foundation provides:

  • A unified control plane for infrastructure operations
  • Consistent lifecycle management and governance
  • Cloud-style consumption with self-service and APIs
  • Support for traditional workloads, Kubernetes, and AI

To achieve this, VMware reorganized how infrastructure is modeled and managed.

As you can see in the above diagram, the infrastructure consists of the following three main constructs:

  • VCF Private Cloud
  • VCF Fleet
  • VCF Instance

Lets’s have a closer look at them, from bottom to top.

Instance

An Instance is the lowest level of VMware Cloud Foundation constructs. It typically consists of a Management Domain and one or more VI Workload Domains.

Each of these Domains consist of a vCenter Server and an NSX Manager (the NSX Manager can be also shared between Workload Domains if desired). The vCenter Server consists of one ore more vSphere clusters.

The first vSphere cluster of a VCF instance is configured as part of the Management Domain and is used to host the Instance management components, but also the Fleet management components. The SDDC Manager appliance is deployed to the Management Domain.

In a nutshell a VCF Instance looks as follows:

  • Management Domain
    • vCenter Server
    • NSX Manager
    • SDDC Manager
  • Workload Domain
    • vCenter Server
    • NSX Manager

Fleet

A VCF fleet is the mid level of VMware Cloud Foundation. It can consist of one or more VCF instances and is managed by a single set of fleet-level management components which are VCF Operations and VCF Automation.  These fleet management components can be used across all domains within a VCF instance and across one or more VCF instances.  A VCF fleet can be deployed across a single region or a multi region deployment. Plus you have the ability to deploy VCF Edge clusters in remote locations such as remote offices, stores, etc.

Private Cloud

A VCF Private Cloud is the highest level of management and consumption for the underlying software defined data center resources.  A VCF Private Cloud can contain one or more VCF Fleets.

Workload Domain and cluster topologies

Cloud Foundation offers a mix of different deployment options to support a large variety of customer scenarios. A standardized architecture caters to customers who wish to separate their workloads from management components.  Workload domains are deployed to separate hardware running their own separate vCenter server and NSX Manager instances. Workload domains are each configured with their own SSO instance. 

For smaller deployments, VCF can be deployed with just a single management domain.  A “consolidated” deployment contains the management components and is also used to run customer workloads which can be configured on separate clusters. Here, vSphere Resource pools are configured to separate host resources for management and customer workloads.

Workload domains can be deployed across one or more racks within an availability zone.  Clusters can be configured as standard clusters within a single rack or across multiple racks when layer 3 networking is in-place between the racks.  

Stretched clusters can be configured across two sites for active-active availability. Availability Zones are configured as fault domains that protects VMs in a vSphere cluster leveraging storage replication techniques. Note, that most of the older VCF 5.x restrictions regarding other storage types than vSAN are gone with VCF 9.0 – so as an example, you can also leverage Fibre Channel storage as primary storage in Management Domain and Workload Domains.

Remote Site Topologies

Cloud Foundation supports the deployment of small workload domains or clusters to remote sites through VCF Edge design patterns. 

This allows customers to extend their compute processing from their centralized data center to support remote locations or offices.  The management infrastructure to run these VCF Edge sites is usually shared and runs in the central data center.

Remote VCF Edge sites provide IT presence through centralized management without extra staffing. Customers can position infrastructure close to remote applications to minimize latency and overheads.

With each approach, VCF Operations is used at the central site to perform fleet management operations which includes password and certificate management and lifecycle management/upgrade and patching operations for each remote site.