Broadcom delivers VMware Cloud Foundation 9 – the release that realizes its private cloud vision

Promises silos for VMs, storage, and networks are out. Happy cloud-like days are in, without hyperscale complications

573 days after closing the acquisition of VMware, Broadcom has released the product that expresses its vision for the virtualization giant's future and what it claims is the template for a modern private cloud.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) is the result of Broadcom's decision to have the teams working on VMware's compute, storage, and networking virtualization tools build an integrated private cloud suite, instead of discrete products that are sold separately and could be assembled into a private cloud.

Prashanth Shenoy, VMware's chief marketing officer, told The Register that the bundle now offers a single interface for all private cloud ops, and another that developers can use for self-service infrastructure provisioning.

Shenoy said cloud admins can now manage storage, compute, and virtual networks as a single entity, and that virtual machines and containers are both first-class citizens.

"We want admins to think cloud first, not compute or storage first," he told The Register. "The idea is not to have a component-based way of looking at infrastructure. The components disappear. The philosophical intent is to look at applications."

vVols on the way out

VCF 9 will, as widely predicted, be the last release to include VMware's vVols storage management tech.

Shenoy told The Register that vVols adoption was in the "low single digits," and said VMware's existing Virtual Machine File System is a more-than-capable replacement.

Shenoy said the suite includes "hundreds of new and enhanced features." Perhaps the most notable is adding GPU workload migration capability to the vMotion tool that already moves VMs between servers without significant disruptions.

Ever since the mid-2000s when VMware emerged as the de facto server virtualization standard, the company has talked up its ability to calculate the cost of running workloads so IT departments can "chargeback" or "showback" – send real or indicative bills to internal users. VCF 9 now includes enhanced analytics it says can do both with greater nuance.

We could go on but you probably get the idea. This is a big upgrade that delivers Broadcom's vision for VMware and invites buyers to build a private cloud that will dispel the cost surprises that so often rain down from public clouds, provide more manageable on-prem infrastructure, reduce fears of legal entanglements with US-based hyperscalers, and provide a safe place to host all the sensitive data you'll assemble to run AI workloads. And it will do all that while delighting developers who want to provision infrastructure instantly, on demand, without making datacenter ops teams pedal furiously in the background to make that possible.

Are you buying it?

Broadcom recently told shareholders that 87 percent of its top 10,000 VMware customers have committed to VCF.

But The Register often hears that customers do so grudgingly, because the product is expensive and Broadcom uses various tactics that make it harder to acquire VMware's server-virtualization-centric bundles. Some customers therefore buy VCF but don't implement all its components.

VCF 9 will make that harder to do – we're told upgrades will install compute, storage, and network virtualization. So perhaps users will be smitten by Broadcom's full private cloud vision.

Gartner VP analyst Michael Warrilow isn't sure that will move buyers. "Although concerns about cloud costs and geopolitics are driving renewed interest in private cloud, I don't think VCF will on its own," he told The Register.

Warrilow has previously said many VMware users have signed up for a three-year Broadcom subscription to give themselves time to plan a migration to a rival product. VMware will end support for VCF 8 in October 2027 and Warrilow said that's the date by which users will have to decide whether to stick with Broadcom or bail.

"Resistance is futile unless you can get off version 8 by October 2027," he said. ®