Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, the strategy around VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) has taken a decisive turn.
Version 9, announced at the latest VMware Explore, embodies this new direction. It’s a single package that includes all the components needed to build a private cloud, while simplifying licence management and redesigning user profiles.
“VMware Cloud Foundation 9 delivers a single, integrated stack that simplifies licensing, reduces operational complexity and provides a predictable, core‑based pricing model – enabling customers to deploy a truly hybrid cloud with confidence.”
Broadcom Press Release, “Broadcom announces VMware Cloud Foundation 9 – A unified, simplified and cost‑predictable hybrid cloud platform” 30 May 2024.
One pack, fewer products
In earlier versions, VCF was essentially a bundle of separate licences (vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, etc.) that customers had to purchase and manage individually. VCF 9 replaces the ‘à la carte’ approach with a single, complete product. This simplification serves two main goals: reducing complexity and ensuring operational consistency.
New licensing policy: from RAM to Core
The pricing model has changed too. Instead of charging based on the RAM used by virtual machines, Broadcom is introducing a Core licence, with a minimum of 16 cores per socket. In practical terms, this means costs are easier to predict when adding nodes or upgrading. Most enterprise servers already come with 16-core (or higher) processors, so this model feels like a natural fit for large-scale deployments.
The VMware experience is evolving
Finally, VCF 9 also aligns with VMware’s customer experience strategy, which focuses on:
- native automation - deploying and running environments with just a few clicks;
- integrated observability - through the Observability suite (logs, metrics), which can be automatically deployed with the VCF solution;
- default security - powered by NSX vDefend and NSX Intelligence.
In short, VCF 9 is a platform built to meet the demands of a modern private cloud, offering clearer pricing, simplified management, and an improved user experience. This new vision from Broadcom paves the way for faster, more cost-effective, and more secure deployments, which we’ll explore in detail throughout the article.
Our pick of the best new features
- Enhanced vSAN deduplication and compression: inline compression is now available on standard and stretched clusters, and is compatible with more workloads (e.g., SQL, Oracle). Deduplication is now cluster-wide and compatible with encryption at rest. Compression has also been improved (4K blocks), now uses Zstandard, and is ‘always-on’ (enabled by default) with vSAN ESA.
- VCF Management Services: management components are now deployed as containers, rather than as multiple virtual appliances (e.g., Fleet, Salt, Software depot, Identity Broker). Everything is deployed in a VCF Management Services appliance, which can be replicated to match the desired level of fault tolerance.
- vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS): Local Consumption Interface (LCI) is now a native Supervisor service, enabled by default, giving you an integrated UI within the vSphere client to manage VMs, Kubernetes clusters, and containers. A container-as-a-service (CaaS) runtime mode is also included, which is lighter than VKS running containers directly on ESXi. Finally, VKS clusters themselves benefit from a much quicker lifecycle.
- vSAN Native Object Storage (Tech Preview): self-service S3 object storage is available for development teams, using the same workflows as block and file storage.
- Live Patching for ESXi (on hosts with TPM) and vCenter RDU: patches are applied directly in-memory to the running kernel, with no disruption to virtual machines – covering up to 80% of patches.
- vSAN Protection: vSAN 9.1 takes replication further, now also protecting non-vSAN sources. NFS, VMFS, FC, or iSCSI data stores can now be replicated to a vSAN ESA.
- Rapid Rollout of vCenter Security Patches: Quick Patch lets you apply patches to vCenter with minimal downtime – sometimes none at all, depending the services involved – and is specifically designed for the fast deployment of critical security patches.
If you’d like more details on all the changes and new features, we’ve put together a more extensive changelog at the end of the article!
Things to watch out for when upgrading
- Architecture: the launch of VCF Management Services and Fleet Lifecycle (replacing the standalone Fleet Management appliance) changes the topology of the management layer.
- Network: growing demand for VPC/Transit Gateway and its usage from vCenter. Check the impact on your existing NSX and Terraform integrations.
- Licensing: the new licence management approach will need sign-off from your company’s compliance team.
- HCX deprecations: expect migrations for PhotonOS (10.0) and VMware Cloud Director (9.2).
- Upgrade sequence: see the ‘Upgrade Sequence to 9.1’ section in the release notes (NSX Edge is now the final step in the sequence).
Final thoughts
VCF 9 is a real turning point for Broadcom: one unified package, a simpler Core licence, and a user experience built for today’s hybrid architectures. We’ve covered the big picture – the new vision, the revised pricing model, and the reworked user experience – then walked through the major features that set this version apart, before rounding things off with the full list of what’s new.
This article is just the starting point: every feature comes with its own finer technical details, real-world implementation scenarios, and best practices well worth exploring in more depth. And that’s exactly what we’ll be doing in the next articles!
Please stay tuned, and let us know if you have any questions or specific needs, via our team or on Discord (https://discord.gg/ovhcloud).
See you soon for the first deep dive!