VCF 9.0 Is Here — What Does That Mean?

Broadcom released VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF) into the world today. The News Release goes over the broad strokes, and lots of others have already posted about the release so I won’t go into detail on all of it:

• Maarten Van Driessen — VCF 9 - News and Thoughts
• Don Horrox — Announced Features for VCF 9
• Edd Watton — A First Look at VMware Cloud Foundation 9
• VMware by Broadcom What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

Focus Change

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The main focus in Broadcoms annoncement is that this is the realization of the “Modern Private Cloud”. The focus has switched from being everything, everywhere to everyone, aka the old VMware Multi-Cloud vision, to a clear focus on Private Cloud — and Private Cloud only.

This release also aligns all the products in the VCF (and vSphere Foundation (VVF)) stack into one product with a set of features, instead of a set of products combined into a “release”.

If you want to get a look at what’s new in an interactive format, there is an Hands-on Lab available: What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 - Operations (HOL-2610-03-VCF-L)

What is included in VCF and VVF 9?

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Bill of Materials

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Notice that the build numbers are now uniform for all the components! (I wonder how that’s egoing to be handled going forward, when something needs to be patched. Also, I have a feeling that VMware Tools Async Release might not have that build number for long).

Initial Highlights

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Of course, all of the different components have their own set of new features, but going through all of them is something for future posts once I have some real experience with deploying them in production environments. There are, however, a few things I would like to highlight:

Unified Installer

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A welcome enhancement is a unified installer for both VCF and VVF:

Install ESX, deploy the installer appliance select your edition (VCF or VVF) and get a automated installation of vCenter and other components. Nice!

Licensing

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Another welcome change is how licenses are managed in VCF 9. While licenses has been a contentious topic since the Broadcom acquisition of VMware, there is finally a welcome change. There is now a single license file that covers the entire environment, and management of those has been moved to Operations.

See Easy Licensing Has Arrived with VCF 9.0 — And It’s About Time! by Christopher Kusek for more details.

Final Thoughts

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VCF 9 shows that VCF has finally grown up into a proper product of it’s own. This is a welcome change, and should help drive adoption. Initial bring-up and management is simplified, and I really like the unified deployment model for both VCF and VVF. I like how Operations now will take center stage, something that’s natural since it’s included in both the VCF and VVF license.

All in all, looking at the enhancements and changes that are being done, I like what I see. A refocused VMware (by Broadcom) delivering what they know best in a coherent and streamlined fashion is refreshing, and a welcome change. We’ve had a long time now with uncertainty and changes that might not have been well communicated or understood, finally there’s something that makes perfect sense in a bigger picture.

Lastly I want to touch on something that might be overlooked as VCF 9 is released;

What about the other licensing bundles, like vSphere Enterprise Plus (VSEP) and vSphere Standard (VVS)? Of course, these now get vSphere 9 (ESX and vCenter), but where do they fit into Broadcoms focus on Private Cloud? My feeling is that they don’t. I will not be surprised that somewhere down the line, both VSEP and VVS will be dropped as licensing options, leaving customers with the choice of VVF or VCF only if they want to continue using VMware products. In the end, I think VVF will disappear as well, leaving VCF as the only option.

Like it or not, that’s where I think we’re headed — just not right away.

Updates

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