Broadcom has announced the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, an update that it promises will provide “the agility and scalability of public cloud with the security, performance, architectural control and total cost of ownership (TCO) benefits of an on-premises environment.”

It introduces a new unified interface for cloud administrators, including a new Quick Start App to reduce setup time, integrated cost management and policy enforcement, fleet management, centralized identity and access management, consolidated log management, and analytics.

It also offers a unified interface for platform and development teams that includes features to help simplify infrastructure service delivery and consumption. Key capabilities for platform teams include admin and tenant identity management, built-in governance policies, and pre-configured blueprints, while development teams get access to automated and elastic self-service IaaS services.

“At the heart of this release is a unification of context. Whether you are troubleshooting a capacity warning, onboarding a new tenant, or publishing an infrastructure template for CI/CD, you work from the same policy model, the same API surface, and the same lifecycle engine. That consistency trims learning curves for operators, removes friction for developers, and—crucially—reduces the points of failure that appear when separate tools drift out of sync,” VMware wrote in a blog post. 

VCF 9.0 embeds vSphere Kubernetes Service, which enables VMs and containers to be treated equally so that they can be built, deployed, and run together. 

Additionally, the latest release improves cost predictability with built-in analytics to enable predictive cost modeling, automated resource optimization to reclaim unused capacity, and detailed showback and chargeback data.

Security enhancements in VCF 9.0 include a new SecOps dashboard that includes platform security and data controls, and support for the latest version of confidential computing technologies from AMD and Intel, such as secure enclaves, encrypted memory, and attestation. 

Broadcom also announced updates across several of the VCF advanced services portfolio, including:

  • VMware Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA: Air-gap support, GPU-as-a-service with multi-tenancy support, vGPU profile visibility, enhanced GPU and vGPU monitoring, better model usage and scalability with Model Runtime, and more efficient AI agent creation using Agent Builder Service.
  • VMware Live Recovery: An on-premises isolated clean room / recovery environment, the ability to recover to a VCF on-premises isolated clean room or existing cloud option, up to 200 immutable snapshots per VM enabled by native replication, and the ability to expand storage independently of compute using vSAN storage clusters
  • VMware vDefend: Self-service microsegmentation, VPC-aware lateral security with delegated administration, VCF Import integration, and global IDS/IPS policy management
  • VMware Data Services Manager: Tech preview for support for Microsoft SQL Server and the ability for IT teams to deliver database-as-a-service
  • Avi Load Balancer: Support for self-service load balancing, streamlined operations and lifecycle management, and VPC-aware deployments