Today was the first day of VMworld 2016 in Las Vegas and within the first of two General Sessions at the conference, VMware announced a new product dubbed Cloud Foundation. Cloud Foundation is a full stack integrated solution that will allow for seamless transition of your enterprise to utilize private and public clouds all in an automated, easily managed solution.
Here is what you need to know about it:
- Integrates vSphere, NSX, and VSAN into a unified stack managed by a new tool called SDDC Manager
- SDDC Manager automates and simplifies the deployment of the entire stack
- SDDC Manager does NOT take the place of vCenter
- Cloud Foundation minimum requirements are 8 nodes as of writing (min. 4 nodes coming soon)
- 1 vCenter per SDDC Manager
- SDDC Manager can manage up to 192 nodes
- vRA does not come with Cloud Foundation but can be used in conjunction with vCF (SDDC Manager handles the underlying infrastructure, vRA handles VM’s)
- vCF via NSX extensibility allows for seamless migration between private and public clouds
- As of writing, IBM Softlayer is only public cloud supported (Obviously, Azure and AWS enroute) and VCE VxRack 1000 is the only full rack supported solution
- Cisco and Arista are your ToR and Spine supported network solutions for the time being
- vCF supports VSAN Ready Nodes (8 of them minimum) as well
- Licensing is per CPU
- GA is September 1, 2016
There ya have it, the quick and dirty rundown of what vCF brings to the table. VMware has teased this type of solution before in regards to EVO SDDC which is being retired as of September 1 in lieu of vCF. vCF is bringing more IP to the table and is what EVO SDDC should have been when first announced.