VMware Cloud Foundation bundles vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and management into a single private cloud platform on standard x86 hardware. Organizations use it to consolidate data center infrastructure, reduce public cloud costs, and maintain full control over workloads and data.
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VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Platform Overview
What is VMware Cloud Foundation?
VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is a full-stack private cloud platform that bundles vSphere (compute), vSAN (storage), NSX (networking), and SDDC Manager (lifecycle management) into a single per-core subscription. Organizations deploy it to consolidate data center infrastructure, reduce public cloud costs, and run VM, container, and AI workloads on hardware they own and control.
Most enterprise data centers run compute servers, dedicated storage arrays, and physical networking from separate vendors — each with its own licensing, support contracts, and upgrade cycles. Managing them independently increases costs, creates upgrade risk, and slows delivery.
Traditional data centers use separate hardware from multiple vendors. Each layer — compute, storage, networking — requires separate licensing and support contracts. When components go out of sync, upgrades become complex and risky.
VCF replaces this with a single software-defined platform on standard x86 servers, managed through one lifecycle tool.
Provisioning a new VM in a traditional environment can take days or weeks. Application teams waiting on IT often bypass internal processes and use public cloud instead.
VCF delivers a self-service portal backed by automated governance. Developers get infrastructure in minutes. IT maintains cost controls, security policies, and compliance.
Organizations that moved workloads to public cloud often face unpredictable compute bills, data egress charges, and per-hour pricing that compounds as workloads scale.
A typical 1,000-VM environment costs ~$4,000/VM/yr in native public cloud. The same workloads on VCF private cloud cost ~$1,200/VM/yr. (Source: TCO Comparative Model 1.12, Broadcom, March 2025.)
From an aggregate study of 138 customer environments comparing traditional 3-tier infrastructure against VMware Cloud Foundation over a three-year period. Source: VMware Cloud Economics Team, TCO Comparative Model, March 2025.
Faster to deploy new workloads
Infrastructure cost savings vs. traditional 3-tier
TCO savings compared to native public cloud
"The long-term TCO of a private cloud often proves more favorable compared to public cloud alternatives."
— David Linthicum, AI and Cloud Computing Thought Leader (Private Clouds and their Public Value, Feb 2025)
This comparison is based on data from the VMware Cloud Economics Team TCO Comparative Model (March 2025), derived from analysis of a typical 1,000-VM environment across three infrastructure models.
Source: TCO Comparative Model 1.12, Broadcom Internal Analysis, March 2025. Based on aggregate study of 138 customer environments. Individual results may vary. Public cloud figures represent native IaaS/PaaS with equivalent capabilities.
These short videos show how VCF 9.0 handles common private cloud operations — upgrade management, memory tiering, fleet management, and modern workload deployment. Useful for IT teams evaluating whether their team can run and maintain the platform.
Upgrading vCenter Without a Maintenance Window — One of the most common concerns IT teams have about running VCF is upgrade complexity. VCF 9.0 upgrades vCenter while workloads stay online. Pre-checks, sequencing, and rollback policies are handled automatically — no manual coordination or scheduled downtime required.
Getting More from Existing Hardware — Rather than buying additional servers for memory-intensive workloads, VCF 9.0 automatically tiers workload memory across DRAM and NVMe storage. This increases VM density per host without hardware investment — useful for teams working with fixed infrastructure budgets.
Managing Multiple Clusters from One Console — Organizations with multiple data center locations or large cluster fleets manage all sites from a single VCF Operations console. Upgrades are planned, scheduled, and executed centrally — reducing version drift, manual coordination, and the risk of inconsistent configurations across sites.
Running VMs, Containers, and AI on One Platform — Organizations often run separate infrastructure stacks for virtual machines and Kubernetes. VCF eliminates this by running both on the same platform. Application teams provision VMs, containers, or AI workloads from a single self-service portal — IT manages one stack instead of three.
VCF is the right fit for specific infrastructure scenarios. Use this as a starting point to evaluate whether it matches your environment and requirements.
IT teams consolidating aging compute servers, storage arrays, and network hardware from multiple vendors. VCF eliminates separate support contracts and upgrade cycles by combining everything into a single validated stack.
Good fit if: you manage separate VMware, storage, and networking vendor relationships today.
Organizations repatriating workloads from AWS, Azure, or GCP after facing unpredictable compute bills or data egress costs. VCF provides a predictable per-core subscription with no egress fees.
Good fit if: your public cloud spend has grown faster than expected and workloads are stable and predictable.
IT teams that need to give developers a cloud-like provisioning experience — without losing policy enforcement, security governance, or cost visibility. VCF Automation delivers a self-service portal backed by automated guardrails.
Good fit if: developers are using public cloud to bypass internal IT because provisioning is too slow.
Healthcare, financial services, and government organizations that cannot or choose not to run regulated workloads on shared public cloud. VCF provides complete control over where data is stored and processed, with built-in compliance configuration guides for FedRAMP, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, SOC 2, and ISO 27001.
Enterprises that need to keep training data and model weights on private infrastructure. VCF with Private AI Foundation with NVIDIA supports GPU virtualization and the full NVIDIA AI Enterprise software stack on your own hardware.
Good fit if: data governance requirements prevent sending sensitive data to public cloud AI services.
Organizations running multiple data center locations, remote offices, or edge deployments. VCF manages all sites — including compact 2-node edge configurations — from a single console with consistent security policies and lifecycle management.
Good fit if: you manage multiple sites today and want a consistent operational model across all of them.
Organizations with aging servers, end-of-life storage arrays, or mixed-vendor environments use VCF to standardize on a single software-defined platform. It consolidates infrastructure management, reduces vendor complexity, and establishes a foundation that scales without adding vendor sprawl.
Typical VCF architecture for this scenario:
According to IDC, more than 80% of companies expect to repatriate compute and storage from public cloud. A Barclays CIO Survey found 83% of enterprises plan to move workloads back to private infrastructure. Organizations that moved to AWS, Azure, or GCP often face higher-than-expected bills as workloads scale. VCF provides a predictable per-core subscription with no data egress fees — on hardware your organization owns.
Healthcare organizations, financial institutions, and government agencies with regulatory requirements often cannot place sensitive workloads on shared public cloud infrastructure. VCF runs on hardware your organization owns, in locations you control. Data stays where you put it.
The VCF base platform includes four components: vSphere (compute), vSAN (storage), NSX (networking), and SDDC Manager (lifecycle management). The following products are available as add-on subscriptions that extend VCF for specific use cases — Private AI, automation, advanced security, load balancing, and application platform capabilities.
VMware vSphere
The compute foundation of VCF. Provides hypervisor-level resource management, vSphere Supervisor for native Kubernetes, and the DRS/HA capabilities that underpin workload availability across the private cloud.
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VMware vSAN
Software-defined storage built into VCF. Pools local disks across cluster hosts into shared enterprise-class storage with built-in data protection, encryption, deduplication, and compression—no external storage array required.
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VMware NSX
Software-defined networking layer in VCF. Provides distributed firewall, zero-trust micro-segmentation, and self-service Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) with automated network provisioning across the private cloud.
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VCF Operations
Business operations add-on for VCF. Delivers AI-driven predictive analytics, capacity planning, cost visibility, chargeback reporting, and workload optimization—providing the financial and operational intelligence to run a well-governed private cloud.
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VCF Automation
Application services add-on for VCF. Enables infrastructure-as-code, self-service catalog, multi-tier blueprints, and day-2 lifecycle operations through a developer-facing portal with automated governance and policy enforcement.
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Private AI with NVIDIA
Private AI add-on for VCF. Adds GPU virtualization, NVIDIA AI Enterprise software stack, GPU Operator support, and the high-bandwidth networking required to run generative AI and LLM workloads on your private cloud infrastructure.
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vDefend Distributed Firewall
Advanced security add-on for VCF. Extends the built-in NSX firewall with Layer 7 application awareness, lateral movement detection, network traffic analysis, and automated threat response capabilities.
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Avi Load Balancer
Load balancing add-on for VCF. Provides software-defined application delivery with real-time analytics, web application firewall (WAF), SSL offload, and elastic horizontal scaling for applications running on your private cloud.
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VMware Tanzu
Application platform add-on for VCF. Provides managed Kubernetes, developer tooling, and application services for teams building and running cloud-native applications — including support for modern databases, messaging, and application runtimes.
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vSphere Kubernetes Service
Kubernetes runtime add-on for VCF. CNCF-certified Kubernetes directly on the hypervisor layer — run and manage modern containerized workloads alongside VMs on the same platform without a separate Kubernetes infrastructure.
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Data Services Manager
Database management add-on for VCF. Deploy and manage open-source databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, RabbitMQ) on private cloud infrastructure — provisioned on demand through the same self-service portal as your VMs and containers.
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Advanced Cyber Compliance
Compliance add-on for VCF. Strengthens cyber compliance posture and security controls for private cloud deployments at scale — particularly for organizations in regulated industries with FedRAMP, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, or GDPR requirements.
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The focus was on how we could provide better care for patients. In a system that relies on digital applications, that means ensuring no unplanned downtime.
— Michael Miller, Technical Architect, Mary Washington Healthcare
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The massive infrastructure supporting Japan Racing Association's market exceeding ¥3 trillion will continue to be robustly supported by VMware Cloud Foundation and the expertise of VCF Professional Services.
— Kenji Yokota, Section Chief, System Management Division, Japan Racing Association
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In a private cloud environment, we can provide a level of security that we feel is unmatched with any public cloud provider.
— Mark Fournier, CIO, US Senate Federal Credit Union
CONTACT USBusiness Case & Research
VCF TCO Whitepaper — $3.7M vs. $12M (1,000-VM Study) Top 5 Reasons to Deploy Private Cloud Infrastructure Private Cloud Outlook 2025 Forrester: Modernize or Fall Behind (October 2025) Unlocking the Evolving Value of Private CloudsVMware vSphere is the hypervisor and compute virtualization layer. It handles running and managing virtual machines on physical servers.
VMware Cloud Foundation includes vSphere plus vSAN (storage), NSX (networking), and SDDC Manager (lifecycle management) — bundled into a single validated platform and sold as one subscription.
The practical difference: when you buy components separately, your team is responsible for validating compatibility between versions and managing upgrades independently. SDDC Manager sequences upgrades across the full stack automatically. Organizations managing large virtualization environments typically find VCF easier to maintain than assembling and patching the same components separately.
VCF is sold as a per-core subscription through authorized resellers. Broadcom does not publish list pricing publicly — resellers like VirtualizationWorks provide quotes based on your core count, support tier, and which add-on services you need.
For a rough cost comparison based on a 1,000-VM environment: VCF private cloud costs ~$1,200/VM/yr ($3.7M annual total) vs. $2,300/VM/yr ($7M) on traditional 3-tier infrastructure vs. $4,000/VM/yr ($12M) on native public cloud. That's 2x cheaper than traditional infrastructure and 3x cheaper than public cloud. (Source: TCO Comparative Model 1.12, Broadcom Internal Analysis, March 2025.)
Contact our team with your server count and approximate core configuration for a sizing estimate and financial impact assessment.
VCF requires a minimum of 4 hosts for the management domain. Standard x86 servers from Dell, HPE, Lenovo, and other major vendors are supported.
For vSAN (the storage layer), each host needs a mix of caching and capacity drives in either all-flash or hybrid configuration. An external storage array is not required — vSAN pools the local drives across hosts.
VMware publishes a Hardware Compatibility Guide (HCL). Contact a VirtualizationWorks specialist to help validate your current hardware or size a new deployment.
Both VCF and Nutanix AOS are hyperconverged infrastructure platforms that combine compute, storage, and management. The main differences come down to hypervisor, networking, and existing environment fit.
VCF uses vSphere as its hypervisor — the dominant platform in most enterprise data centers. Existing vSphere skills and tooling carry over. Nutanix uses its own AHV hypervisor, or optionally vSphere at additional cost.
For networking, VCF includes NSX, which provides more advanced micro-segmentation and distributed firewall capabilities than Nutanix's built-in networking.
Organizations with an existing VMware footprint typically choose VCF to maintain operational consistency. Organizations without VMware infrastructure evaluate both platforms based on hardware flexibility and licensing model.
Yes. VCF is the on-premises foundation for VMware hybrid cloud architectures. Organizations can extend their VCF environment to VMware Cloud on AWS, Google Cloud VMware Engine, or Azure VMware Solution.
Because all endpoints run the same vSphere-based stack, your team manages both sides with the same operational tooling — no application re-architecture required. This also enables live workload migration and disaster recovery between on-premises VCF and cloud endpoints.
For disaster recovery specifically, the Live Recovery add-on extends VCF with automated failover and recovery capabilities. Contact our team to discuss architecture options for your DR requirements.
VirtualizationWorks is an authorized VMware reseller. We help IT teams assess whether VCF fits their environment, size the deployment, compare licensing options, and plan the migration from existing infrastructure.
