As enterprises modernize their IT infrastructure, they seek solutions that balance flexibility, scalability, security, performance, and control. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is the preferred choice for building a modern private cloud infrastructure.
Here are the ten essential requirements of a modern private cloud and how VCF fulfills them:
1. Infrastructure Based on a Cloud Operating Model #
Infrastructure should adopt a cloud operating model, where IT services are delivered through infrastructure automation, DevOps practices, and consumption-based resource provisioning—minimizing IT overhead and accelerating innovation.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Automated Deployment: VCF automates the deployment of vSphere, vSAN, NSX, VCF Automation, and VCF Operations, reducing time and complexity.
- Automated Lifecycle Management: VCF automates installation and lifecycle management for all its components—from initial setup and configuration to patching and upgrades—making it easy for cloud admins to build and maintain VCF.
- Self-Service Infrastructure Provisioning: With VCF automation, application teams can provision infrastructure on their own in a self-service model, avoiding lengthy IT ticket processes.
2. Software-Defined Infrastructure #
Infrastructure resources such as compute, networking, and storage should be abstracted and managed by software for greater flexibility and adaptability.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Integrated Private Cloud Platform: VMware Cloud Foundation delivers a unified virtualization platform that bundles enterprise-grade compute, networking, storage, management, and security into a single package—enabling private cloud deployment in just a few hours.
3. Infrastructure That Reduces Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) #
The infrastructure should help organizations reduce both capital and operational costs.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Lower Infrastructure Costs: Through higher VM density, hyperconverged storage, integrated Kubernetes runtime, VPC networking, and more.
- Lower Operational Costs: End-to-end automation, reduced hardware support expenses, and optimized licensing costs.
4. Flexible and Scalable Infrastructure #
The infrastructure must be scalable and flexible to adapt to changing business needs.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Ultimate Flexibility: Standardized building blocks and license portability across private, public, edge, and partner clouds allow customers to deploy applications anywhere, with investment protection.
- Scalability: VCF supports horizontal scaling by adding servers to clusters and vertical scaling by adding storage to hosts without additional compute. Workload domains and multi-cluster architecture allow independent scaling.
5. Reliable, Secure, and Resilient Infrastructure #
The environment must be highly available, secure, resilient, and designed to minimize downtime.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Robust Security, Compliance, and Governance: Out-of-the-box features like micro-segmentation, hardened infrastructure, encryption at rest/in transit, RBAC, data governance, threat detection, and compliance enforcement.
- Resilient Platform: High availability and built-in security features (e.g., vSAN data protection, stretched clusters, vSphere HA) reduce service disruption and data loss during unexpected events.
6. Support for Modern Workloads #
Infrastructure should support containers, microservices, AI/ML workloads, and more to deliver modern applications.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Robust Compute for Traditional and Modern Workloads: VMware vSphere empowers developers and DevOps teams to securely build and operate next-gen and legacy apps.
- Native Kubernetes Integration: vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) provides native CNCF-compliant orchestration integrated with any VCF environment at no extra cost.
- Faster Delivery of Latest Kubernetes Versions: VKS decouples Kubernetes updates from vCenter, enabling asynchronous updates aligned with upstream releases.
- Simplified and Secure GenAI Deployment with NVIDIA: VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA enables enterprises to run RAG workflows, fine-tune/customize LLMs, and perform inference on-prem—solving challenges around privacy, cost, performance, and compliance.
7. Seamless Integration with Existing Environments #
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Smooth Import of Existing Setups: VCF’s import capabilities convert existing vSphere, vSAN, VMFS-FC, and NFS environments into a VCF instance, simplifying integration with the full-stack infrastructure.
8. Automation and Self-Service Consumption #
Infrastructure provisioning and management should be automated and flexibly orchestrated to improve operational efficiency and visibility.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Infrastructure Automation via VCF Automation: As a core component, VCF Automation offers self-service catalogs, IaaS, and infrastructure-as-code (IaC), giving users a self-service experience while enabling admins with governance and management tools.
9. Simplified Management Experience #
A simplified management experience is critical to reducing operational complexity, accelerating innovation, and improving efficiency.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Intelligent Operations: With VCF Operations, the platform delivers comprehensive visibility across compute, storage, and networking, including performance tuning, capacity planning, cost optimization, configuration management, compliance, monitoring, troubleshooting, log analysis, and end-to-end network visibility.
10. Consistent Infrastructure and Operations #
Infrastructure should be consistent and easily extendable across private cloud, public cloud, and edge locations.
Key VCF Capabilities:
- Seamless Expansion: VCF enables private cloud platforms to extend across on-premises, public cloud, partner clouds, sovereign clouds, edge, and hosted environments. VCF Operations and the HCX tool offer seamless and efficient workload migration across environments.