VMware recently announced a major update to its VMware Cloud Foundation architecture version 5.0. This major release of the platform offers additional scalability, security, and several key enhancements that address requirements for IaaS infrastructures, simplify in-house cloud deployments, and provide additional protection against cyberattacks.
The main components of VCF 5.0 are as follows:
As a reminder, VCF is VMware’s premier software end-to-end infrastructure solution that includes components from VMware vRealize Suite, VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware Horizon, NSX, and others running on-premise, cloud, or hybrid enterprise infrastructure managed by SDDC Manager.
The release of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 is the result of many months of development and testing. During this period, the latest vSphere 8.0 Update 1a for workload management, vSAN 8.0 Update 1a for scale-out storage, NSX 4.1 for networking, and vRealize Lifecycle Manager 8.10 (Aria) for cloud management were tested.
Let’s see what’s new in the updated VCF 5 architecture:
1. SDDC Manager improvements
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 includes a new feature called Isolated SSO Workload Domains that allows administrators to set up new workload domains using a single Single Sign On (SSO) instance. This scenario is useful for large enterprises that need to isolate their workloads, as well as for service providers who can allocate workload areas to different clients with their own SSO domains. Each isolated SSO domain is configured with its own instance of NSX. An additional benefit is that configuring workload areas as an isolated workload area also gives you the option to set up a separate identity provider (Active Directory or LDAP).
2. Workload area scaling
For Workload domain scaling, the number of isolated workload domains has been increased from 15 to 25 within a single instance of VMware Cloud Foundation. Please note that workload areas configured to use a common SSO management domain are still limited to a maximum of 15 domains. Additional scaling is made possible by task parallelization to reduce the time it takes to add workload areas to a VMware Cloud Foundation instance.
3. VMware Cloud Foundation Platform and Scaling Improvements
Looking at the new capabilities introduced in VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0, vSphere / vSAN platform and scaling improvements are the most anticipated feature requests from customers of VMware Cloud Foundation environments. It’s also important to highlight that upgrades to VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 are direct, with the option to skip upgrades to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5.
4. SDDC Manager Context Aware Pre-Checks and Configuration Drift
To provide the best user experience, the SDDC manager uses pre-context checks (Pre-Checks) to ensure that the infrastructure stack is ready to accept the desired update. The workflows built in VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 ensure that the deployment is upgraded to the desired version of VMware Cloud Foundation in the correct order, starting with the management domain components.
In VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0, SDDC manager pre-checks have been improved to be context-aware. Once the SDDC manager has been installed or upgraded to version 5.0, administrators can choose to upgrade their VMware Cloud Foundation domains to the new target version of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x (skipping releases if necessary), which gives administrators the ability to pre-check for a specific VMware release Cloud Foundation or perform a “general upgrade readiness” pre-check to ensure overall platform readiness.
With VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0, the SDDC Manager also allows administrators to view any configuration changes that are installed as part of an upgrade to provide additional visibility and help administrators better understand the new features and functionality and the impact they may have on their current deployments.
You can also read more about the new features of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.0 in the following articles: