VMware Cloud Foundation

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VMware Cloud Foundation was built to provide a single platform that delivers the simplest path to the hybrid cloud which businesses demand from IT.

One of the key demands of our customers is to leverage the public cloud for at least part of their data center. The public cloud is now key to any IT strategy. They want maximum flexibility, as long as the underlying infrastructure provides the capabilities that they need.

Cloud Foundation allows you to achieve this much easier and more efficient by providing a common platform that allows you to leverage the same processes, peoples and tools that you have already invested in across both private and public. This means you don’t have to invest more time and money to re-write applications.



The unique advantage of VMware Cloud Foundation is that it is the complete full stack for all capabilities required.

It includes the engine to run and secure applications, it stores data securely and according to service level agreements, it connects applications, it automates the environment and the delivery of applications and IT services, and it provides all operational capabilities like monitoring and capacity planning. This is indeed the complete solution. It is a true software-define digital foundation.

But there is more. We enable customers to run this in their own data center, or in public clouds, or on the edge, or in Telco-clouds, in any environment.

VMware Cloud Foundation makes that possible. VMware is the only one-stop-shop to run anything, anywhere and build a “business ready” future-proof architecture.

Cloud Foundation provides exactly this type of digital foundation as it delivers a fully integrated software-defined cloud platform for compute, storage, networking, security, and cloud management that can be consumed both in private or public environments. Cloud Foundation makes operating the data center fundamentally simpler by bringing the ease and automation of the public cloud in-house by deploying a standardized and validated architecture with built in life-cycle automation for the entire cloud stack.

With security being one of the top priorities for the data center, Cloud Foundation includes end-to-end security built into every level of the infrastructure, from micro-segmentation at the networking layer down to encryption at the storage layer. For those looking to extend to the public cloud, Cloud Foundation can be consumed as a service through our cloud service provider partners including Cloud, IBM, Rackspace, and others-enabling a true hybrid cloud based on a common and compatible platform that stretches from on-premises to off-premises, ready for both traditional virtual machines and new containerized apps.

  • Integrated software-defined cloud platform 
  • Simplest to deploy and operate 
  • Built-in intrinsic security 
  • Supports traditional and new workloads 
  • Enables path to hybrid cloud

The primary pillars of value for Cloud Foundation are that it is a complete and private cloud made easy. It provides the ability to standardize and mitigate risk and it provides a path to the hybrid cloud. 

COMPLETE PRIVATE CLOUD, MADE EASY

  • Automatically deploys the complete software-defined data center as single integrated platform.
  • Built-in lifecycle automation for a public cloud-like experience on-premises.
  • Complete cloud automation frees up resources for innovation.
  • Supports all workloads, traditional and cloud-native.
  • Avoid vendor lock-in with broad hardware partner ecosystem.
  • Avoid service provider lock-in with growing service provider ecosystem 
STANDARDIZE AND MITIGATE RISKS 
  • Security built-in to every level of the infrastructure 
  • Standardized HCI architecture based on a VMware Validated Design
  • Enables IT standardization across locations
  • Fewer manual activities mean lower risks 
PROVIDE A PATH TO HYBRID CLOUD
  • Available as a Service from a variety of service providers: 
  • VMware Cloud and Select VMware Cloud providers
  • Enables true hybrid cloud with consistent infrastructure and operations from data center to cloud
  • Avoid service provider lock-in with growing service provider ecosystem
There are many use cases for VMware Cloud Foundation, including IT automation, virtual desktop infrastructure, cloud native apps, artificial intelligence and machine learning, high performance computing, and big data.

IT AUTOMATION / IAAS  :  Rather than installing servers, configuring storage and networking and manually connecting management tools, Cloud Foundation customers can simply provision infrastructure (the full stack of compute, storage, networking and management) automatically and reliably through workload domains. This level of automation eliminates opportunities for human error while greatly accelerating the time it takes to provision ready-to-use infrastructure from weeks to just hours.

VIRTUAL DESKTOPS : Cloud Foundation provides automated deployment of Horizon 7 virtual desktop infrastructure, including User Environment Manager, Unified Access Gateways and App Volumes components for turnkey virtual desktops deployed in accordance with VMware best practices.

CLOUD NATIVE APPS :  Automated NSX-T Deployments in workload domains is now supported in Cloud Foundation. With NSX-T support, Kubernetes workloads can be deployed, run, and managed through VMware Enterprise PKS within a Cloud Foundation workload domain.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / MACHINE LEARNING : Cloud Foundation leverages GPU support provided in vSphere 6.7 to accelerate artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.

HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING : Organizations can leverage multi-cluster workload domains to automatically scale out infrastructure to support high performance compute (HPC) workloads. As HPC workloads demand additional capacity, cloud administrators can simply add compute, storage and network resources to workload domains in just a few clicks through Cloud Foundation’s automated workflows.

BIG DATA : Cloud Foundation supports external NFS and FC storage connectivity for massive data sets typical of Big Data workloads. By combining high performance vSAN storage with massive scale-out external storage, Big Data workloads can leverage the right storage for the right jobs to provide quicker insights into business data.


Cloud Foundation is built on trusted VMware technologies for compute, storage, networking, cloud management, and life-cycle automation. These technologies are the building blocks for organizations to build a software-defined data center, with Cloud Foundation, integrating all these capabilities into a single platform that is easy to consume.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these Cloud Foundation services.

COMPUTE : For Compute, organizations most likely realize the benefits of deploying our compute virtualization technology through vSphere. It’s the most trusted hypervisor in the industry. Cloud Foundation is based on vSphere to deliver features such as live migration, predictive load balancing, high availability and fault tolerance, and centralized administration and management.

STORAGE : For storage, Cloud Foundation delivers high-performance and highly scalable storage. This is based on hyper-converged architecture that can support all-flash or hybrid storage and provides data services such as deduplication and compression, data protection, and replication. vSAN, NFS and FC are all valid options.

NETWORKING : Cloud Foundation also virtualizes the network. This is the key to achieving the full benefits of a software-defined data center. Without it, network and security services will still be a manual configuration and provisioning process, ultimately becoming the bottleneck to faster delivery of IT resources. By leveraging NSX, Cloud Foundation delivers key features such as distributed switching or routing, micro-segmentation, load balancing, L4-7 networking services, and distributed firewall.

CLOUD MANAGEMENT : Cloud Foundation has integrated cloud management capabilities to deliver a complete private cloud, out of the box, to automate the delivery of composable infrastructure and app services, intelligent health, performance, capacity, and configuration management, and automated costing and usage metering for infrastructure services across clouds.

LIFECYCLE AUTOMATION : Cloud Foundation makes all this incredibly easy to deploy and manage with built-in lifecycle management of the entire stack, automating all day zero to day two operations from deployment, configuration, cloud infrastructure provisioning, and upgrading and patching.


VMware Cloud Foundation Bringing Everything Together. 


Let's continue to explore some more exciting stuffs in VMware Cloud foundation in future blogs.

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