DEVOPSdigest

Broadcom unveiled VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9, the future of VCF that will accelerate customers’ transition from siloed IT architectures to a unified and integrated private cloud platform that lowers cost and risk.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will simplify the deployment, consumption and operations of a secure and cost-effective private cloud.

VMware Cloud Foundation is a private cloud platform delivering public cloud scale and agility with private cloud security, resilience and performance, and low overall total cost of ownership. VCF supports customers’ digital innovation with faster infrastructure modernization, a unified cloud experience, and better cyber resiliency and platform security and low total cost of ownership.

“To break the infrastructure silos, reclaim control of public cloud sprawl, and capture the opportunity for AI in the enterprise, our customers are shifting from best-of-breed siloed architectures to a modern private cloud platform,” said Krish Prasad, senior vice president and general manager, VCF Division at Broadcom. “VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will redefine the landscape for private cloud by delivering a modern, integrated platform that will unify operations and automation to deliver a cloud experience that enables businesses to be more innovative, efficient, resilient and secure.”

To help customers modernize their infrastructure, VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will deliver capabilities that enable their infrastructure to operate as a single unified and automated system, helping customers keep pace with modern app requirements, and bring the advanced VMware capabilities they already have from Broadcom into their private cloud platform.

- Unified Operations and Automation: VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will feature a self-service cloud portal for provisioning services, and reduce the total number of management consoles from more than a dozen to just a single console each for operations and automation. New integrated workflows will simplify the transition between operations and automation tasks, and enhanced insights and analytics will enable even more proactive management.

- Expanded VCF Import: VCF Import helps organizations transition quickly to a modern and integrated infrastructure by reducing the complexity and downtime associated with manual migrations of existing environments into the VCF private cloud platform. With VMware Cloud Foundation 9, Broadcom will add the ability for customers to import VMware NSX, VMware vDefend, VMware Avi Load Balancer and more complex storage topologies into existing VCF environments, and leverage and integrate older versions of existing infrastructure. A new intuitive UI will further simplify management and deployment.

- Advanced Memory Tiering with NVMe: This new memory tiering capability will significantly enhance data-intensive applications, such as AI, databases and real-time analytics. AI workloads, especially those involving large datasets and complex models, demand rapid data retrieval and processing. Memory tiering using NVMe reduces latency and accelerates data throughput, which is crucial for training and inference tasks. Additionally, the cost-efficiency of tiering helps manage the high storage demands of AI applications, enabling scalable solutions that maintain performance without excessive expenses.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will expose easy-to-consume infrastructure services that enable developers and application owners to deploy any application (VM or containerized) without friction. VCF will support:

- Integrated VCF Multi-Tenancy: VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will bring multi-tenant capabilities previously provided separately by VMware Cloud Director into the VCF platform. Enterprise IT teams will then be able to support different organizations, business groups or development teams on the same shared infrastructure, while allowing application owners and development teams to segment their infrastructure based on their specific requirements for access, workload management, security and privacy.

- Native VPC Deployment: VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will deliver the next evolution of VPCs as a native networking-as-a-service experience for VCF customers to increase developer productivity, reduce operational burden on IT, and enable faster provisioning of workloads and applications. Native VPC capabilities will simplify networking by enabling users to access self-service isolated connectivity without VLAN complexities and enable non-disruptive integration with existing networks. Native VPCs can be further enhanced through Advanced Services such as VMware vDefend to enable security groups and VMware Avi Load Balancer to enable one-click deployment of load-balancing as a service with VPC deployment.

- Accelerated Adoption of VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA: Aimed at enterprises looking to harness the power of AI while maintaining the benefits of a private cloud, VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA offers a comprehensive solution for deploying, managing, and scaling AI-driven applications securely and efficiently on VCF-based private clouds. With VMware Cloud Foundation 9, Broadcom will deliver new VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA capabilities that further simplify GenAI deployments such as vGPU profile visibility, GPU reservations, data indexing and retrieval service, and an AI agent builder service.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 will enable fleet-level operations and centralized security and compliance management to deliver uninterrupted operations and more proactive risk mitigation. Enhancements to VMware Cloud Foundation as well as Advanced Services will include:

- Unified VCF Security Management: Through native capabilities for Security Operations (SecOps) in VCF, customers will be able to enhance overall security posture while ensuring operational efficiency is maintained by managing across their entire global fleet of VCF deployments. A centralized information hub will provide timely and accurate security data in one place and a new comprehensive security view will provide visibility into multiple facets of security. Configuration drift detection will correlate and proactively notify IT of inconsistencies in system configurations across an entire VCF fleet.

- Native vSAN-to-vSAN Data Protection with Deep Snapshots: vSAN remote snapshot replication will strengthen data resilience with a deep history of immutable snapshots, reduce downtime with enterprise-grade DR orchestration, and simplify the management experience with a unified appliance. It also supports vSAN disaggregated storage for increased scalability and storage efficiency. Customers can leverage the deep, immutable vSAN snapshots to recover from ransomware attacks with an on-premises Isolated Recovery Environment. This complements the existing cloud-based ransomware recovery offering to provide greater choice and flexibility to customers who want to preserve data sovereignty and unlock the value of the full VCF stack to protect workloads anywhere.

- Advancing Cyber Threat Prevention: vDefend will expand to deliver new capabilities such as distributed firewall rule impact analysis to help simplify micro-segmentation security policy operations; distributed intrusion detection and prevention (IDPS) enhancements to support large, dense and multi-instance VCF environments; rapid threat assessment to help harden security posture by enabling threat profiling of VCF environments; and on-premises malware prevention for regulated organizations that require air-gapped deployment of VCF. Project Cypress will deliver GenAI-based intelligent assistance to help IT security teams proactively triage sophisticated threat campaigns and recommend remediation options.

Broadcom is also introducing VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Advanced Services, a robust catalog of ready-to-deploy solutions, enabling customers to accelerate innovation in their private cloud environments. This diverse library of private cloud solutions are similar to what enterprises have come to expect in the public cloud, allowing them to access the tools and technologies they need to rapidly address a variety of use cases and business opportunities. Whether customers use VCF Advanced Services on their own or with the help of a certified VMware Partner, each solution is fully vetted by Broadcom, with prescriptive architectural guidance to help speed deployment and time to value.

Recognizing that there are many paths and steps to implementing a private cloud, Broadcom is investing extensively to help guide and support customers through the process.

- Private Cloud Maturity Model: designed to help customers assess their private and hybrid cloud capabilities across operations, processes and technology, the Private Cloud Maturity Model includes a Private Cloud Framework, an assessment resulting in a Private Cloud Maturity Index Score, and prescriptive guidance from Broadcom that helps customers chart a path forward for their ideal private cloud.

- Jumpstart Program: Jumpstart Workshops help customers review their private cloud goals against their current cloud maturity level, evaluate their current architecture against their private cloud goals, and provide a tailored adoption plan to achieve the customers’ private cloud objectives. Leveraging the results of the Private Cloud Maturity Model assessment, VCF Jumpstart workshops enable customers to work with Broadcom to maximize technology investments faster by identifying improvement opportunities and developing actionable recommendations.

- New VMware Cloud Foundation Certification: Broadcom’s new VMware Cloud Foundation certification exam allows IT teams to acquire in-demand skills aligned with current technology trends, make the transition to private cloud, reduce cloud costs, optimize resource usage, and maximize their VMware Cloud Foundation investment.

- Free Digital Learning and Instructor-led Training: VCF customers now have unlimited complimentary access to the comprehensive VMware Cloud Foundation digital training library as well as instructor-led training to upskill and reskill teams via continuous learning. Investing in upskilling ensures teams understand VMware Cloud Foundation in depth, resulting in better efficiency, increased productivity, and faster ROI. VCF proficiency also empowers IT professionals to serve as experienced cloud advocates and drive proactive private cloud adoption among various teams within their organization.