VMware Cloud Foundation 9: Simplifying Deployment, Consumption, and Operations for the Modern Private Cloud

 

At VMware Explore 2024 Las Vegas, Broadcom Inc. unveiled VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, marking a pivotal step forward in private cloud technology. This newest release aims to accelerate the transition from fragmented IT architectures to a unified, integrated platform that enhances security, scalability, and efficiency. VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 is designed to radically simplify the deployment, consumption, and operations of a secure and cost-effective private cloud.

As the industry's first platform to merge the benefits of public cloud scale and agility with private cloud security, performance, and resilience, VMware Cloud Foundation is uniquely positioned to support customers' digital innovation needs. By delivering faster infrastructure modernization, VCF offers a truly unified cloud experience, increasing operational efficiency, boosting cyber resilience, and significantly lowering the total cost of ownership (TCO). This makes it an ideal solution for businesses seeking to modernize their infrastructure without sacrificing security or cost efficiency.

Making It Faster and Easier to Deploy and Operate Modern Infrastructure

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 introduces a suite of features designed to help organizations rapidly modernize their infrastructure. With a focus on unified, automated operations, VCF 9 enables enterprises to operate their environments as a single, cohesive system. This helps them keep pace with modern application requirements while leveraging the advanced VMware capabilities from Broadcom.

• Unified Operations and Automation: VMware Cloud Foundation 9 reduces operational complexity by consolidating more than a dozen management consoles into just two—one for operations and one for automation. The newly introduced self-service cloud portal allows IT teams to streamline provisioning, minimizing the manual overhead associated with infrastructure management. Furthermore, integrated workflows simplify the handoff between operations and automation tasks, improving overall efficiency. Enhanced insights and analytics provide more proactive and informed decision-making, reducing the risk of downtime and performance bottlenecks.

• Expanded VCF Import: As businesses move to modernized infrastructures, one challenge is migrating existing environments with minimal disruption. VMware Cloud Foundation 9 addresses this with expanded VCF Import capabilities, allowing organizations to seamlessly import critical components such as VMware NSX, VMware vDefend, and VMware Avi Load Balancer, as well as complex storage topologies. This minimizes downtime and simplifies migration, helping businesses transition to VCF with ease. A new, intuitive user interface further simplifies these tasks, ensuring smooth management and deployment for IT teams.

• Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe: As data-intensive applications like AI, databases, and real-time analytics become more prevalent, performance demands are higher than ever. VMware Cloud Foundation 9’s memory tiering capability, powered by NVMe, addresses these needs by reducing latency and accelerating data throughput. This is especially critical for AI workloads that require fast data retrieval for training and inference tasks. The efficiency of NVMe tiering enables organizations to manage large datasets cost-effectively, ensuring scalability without compromising performance.

Delivering a Cloud Experience that Provides Frictionless Consumption of Resources

One of the most significant advancements in VMware Cloud Foundation 9 is its ability to streamline the deployment and consumption of resources, creating a frictionless experience for developers and application owners. VCF 9 exposes easy-to-consume infrastructure services, making it possible to deploy any type of application—whether virtual machines (VMs) or containerized workloads—with minimal complexity.

• Integrated VCF Multi-Tenancy: A key innovation in VCF 9 is the integration of multi-tenancy capabilities directly into the platform, eliminating the need for separate VMware Cloud Director deployments. This enables enterprise IT teams to support multiple organizations, business units, or development teams on the same shared infrastructure. The platform allows for the segmentation of resources based on specific access, workload management, security, and privacy requirements. This provides flexibility for teams to tailor their environments without compromising the overall infrastructure's performance or security. The result is a more efficient use of shared infrastructure while maintaining autonomy for individual teams.

• Native VPC Deployment: With VCF 9, VMware introduces native Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) deployment as a networking-as-a-service experience. This capability is designed to boost developer productivity by simplifying networking configuration. Instead of relying on complex VLAN setups, developers can now self-provision isolated connectivity with VPCs, reducing the operational burden on IT teams. VCF 9’s Native VPCs also integrate seamlessly with existing network infrastructures, offering non-disruptive expansion. By leveraging Advanced Services, such as VMware vDefend for security group creation and VMware Avi Load Balancer for one-click load balancing, organizations can ensure secure, scalable, and highly available network configurations, further enhancing agility.

• Accelerated Adoption of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA: In response to the growing demand for AI workloads, VCF 9 accelerates the adoption of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA. This solution is aimed at enterprises looking to harness the power of AI while maintaining the control and security benefits of private clouds. New enhancements in VCF 9 will simplify the deployment and scaling of GenAI applications. Features such as vGPU profile visibility and GPU reservations allow for optimized resource management in AI environments. Additionally, services like data indexing and retrieval and an AI agent builder further streamline the development and management of AI-driven applications. These capabilities provide enterprises with a robust and secure framework to scale AI operations efficiently.

Enabling Uninterrupted Operations, Cyber Resilience, and Compliance

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) aims to provide enterprise-grade resilience by enabling fleet-level operations, centralized security, and streamlined compliance management. These capabilities ensure that organizations can maintain uninterrupted operations, improve their security posture, and mitigate risks more proactively. Key enhancements in VCF 9, alongside Advanced Services, will significantly improve customers’ operational security and data resilience.

• Unified VCF Security Management: VCF 9 introduces native Security Operations (SecOps) capabilities that enable enterprises to bolster their security posture across global deployments without sacrificing operational efficiency. Through a centralized security hub, IT teams will be able to access accurate and timely security insights from all VCF deployments in one place. The new comprehensive security view offers visibility into various security aspects, ranging from configurations to threat detection. Enhanced configuration drift detection will proactively identify inconsistencies in system configurations, helping IT teams address potential vulnerabilities or misconfigurations across the entire VCF fleet before they escalate into larger issues. This unified approach to security management not only increases visibility but also simplifies the response to threats, reducing the operational overhead typically associated with maintaining security at scale.

• Native vSAN-to-vSAN Data Protection with Deep Snapshots: VMware Cloud Foundation 9 strengthens data protection with native vSAN-to-vSAN snapshot replication, which is crucial for enterprise-grade disaster recovery (DR). With the introduction of deep, immutable snapshots, VCF 9 enables organizations to maintain a rich history of data snapshots, offering stronger resilience against data loss or corruption. These snapshots are ideal for ransomware protection, as they provide a tamper-proof method for recovering critical data. In the event of an attack, organizations can recover data using an on-premises Isolated Recovery Environment, ensuring data sovereignty while avoiding reliance solely on cloud-based recovery options. This flexibility supports diverse disaster recovery strategies while leveraging the full potential of the VCF stack to secure workloads across multiple environments.

• Advancing Cyber Threat Prevention: VMware’s vDefend security tool is being expanded with a suite of new capabilities designed to enhance cyber threat prevention across VCF environments. These include distributed firewall rule impact analysis, which simplifies micro-segmentation policies by allowing IT teams to better understand the impact of rule changes before implementation. The addition of distributed intrusion detection and prevention (IDPS) offers improved threat detection and mitigation, particularly in large and complex multi-instance VCF environments. Moreover, rapid threat assessments will enable IT teams to proactively address vulnerabilities by providing threat profiles specific to each VCF deployment. For highly regulated industries that require air-gapped environments, on-premises malware prevention offers a safeguard against malware threats without relying on cloud-based solutions. Furthermore, Project Cypress introduces GenAI-powered intelligent assistance that can help IT security teams stay ahead of evolving cyber threats by proactively triaging sophisticated campaigns and suggesting appropriate remediation options.

Introducing VMware Cloud Foundation Advanced Services

Broadcom is unveiling VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Advanced Services, a comprehensive suite of ready-to-deploy solutions designed to accelerate innovation and enhance the capabilities of private cloud environments. This new catalog of services offers enterprises a diverse range of tools and technologies that mirror the flexibility and scalability typically found in public clouds, but with the security and control of a private cloud infrastructure.

• A Robust Catalog of Solutions: VCF Advanced Services represents a significant leap forward in providing enterprises with access to a broad array of pre-configured solutions. These services are designed to address various use cases and business opportunities quickly and efficiently. The catalog includes advanced solutions for infrastructure management, application deployment, security, and compliance, all tailored to meet the specific needs of private cloud environments.

• Accelerating Deployment and Time to Value: Each solution within the VCF Advanced Services catalog has been thoroughly vetted by Broadcom, ensuring high quality and compatibility with existing VCF deployments. Customers can leverage these services either independently or in collaboration with a certified VMware Partner. The solutions come with prescriptive architectural guidance, streamlining the deployment process and accelerating time to value. This approach helps organizations implement advanced functionalities and capabilities without the traditional delays associated with custom deployments.

• Enhancing Private Cloud Capabilities: By providing ready-to-deploy services, VCF Advanced Services helps enterprises enhance their private cloud environments with minimal effort. Organizations can rapidly integrate new technologies and functionalities, enabling them to respond more quickly to changing business needs and technological advancements. Whether it's optimizing infrastructure, improving security, or deploying advanced applications, VCF Advanced Services offers the tools and support needed to achieve these goals efficiently.

For more details on the full catalog of VCF Advanced Services and how they can benefit your organization,Click here.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 delivers unparalleled simplicity, security, and efficiency for modern private clouds. Stay tuned for more insights as we continue to explore the future of cloud technology.