VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 2.2 : What’s new

During Pat’s keynote yesterday, he mentioned how the industry is moving towards consuming the unified SDDC platform. Enterprises are looking for a platform that delivers cloud ready infrastructure which is easy to deploy, manage and secure. A fully integrated system that just works.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) does just that. VCF is an unified SDDC platform that brings together vSphere, vSAN, and NSX into a natively integrated stack. It delivers, enterprise-ready cloud infrastructure for the private and public cloud. It not only brings the compute, storage and network virtualization technologies together, it also delivers end-to-end life-cycle management of these technologies.

One of the key highlights of VMworld 2017 is the release of  VCF 2.2. It is now available with all the latest versions of VMware products that make up the platform. It also has some enhancements to it’s previous version 2.1. VCF comes with vSphere 6.5 Update 1, vSAN 6.6.1, NSX 6.3.3, and Horizon 7.2.

Below are some of the major enhancements in the 2.2 release:

• Improved system architecture using a single management domain model. This new structure provides full deployment and configuration during bring-up, along with reduced demand on resources.
• Optimized SDDC Manager : SDDC Manager is now consolidated to two VMs (controller and utility). This ensures a smaller footprint while improving scalability and performance, while incorporating hardware management for improved network accessibility.
• Supported hardware extended to include servers from Fujitsu, Lenovo, and HDS. The compatibility guide can be found at : https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=vcf
• Support for third-party vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs) during imaging in VIA
• Automated implementation of signed certificates for vCenter, PSC, NSX, SDDC Manager, and vRealize Log Insight – This is a huge benefit to the administrators as the manual process of replacing the certs is tedious and time consuming
• Improved vRealize Log Insight support. Now deployed during bring-up as a three-host cluster
• Improved and expanded functionality for image and file-level backup and restore for management domain VMs

There are also several minor enhancements that can be found on the release notes of version 2.2.

One thing to note is that vRealize Operations is not part of the VCF 2.2 bundle. However it can be deployed as a standalone component that is integrated with VCF. There is a specific KB article that outlines the steps involved and can be found here.

The VCF 2.2 overview and bring-up guide can be found here

Existing customers can either upgrade to the newer version or deploy the 2.2 version as a fresh deployment. Be sure to check out the VCF product page to get latest updates and information on how VCF integrates with other stacks of VMware.