We’re excited to announce the General Availability of the Broadcom-built Argo CD Operator for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), now compatible with VCF 9.0 and available as part of the vSphere Supervisor Release 9.0.0.0100. This milestone makes GitOps easier to adopt across your private cloud, empowering both platform teams and developers to implement automated, version-controlled delivery pipelines—whether managing Kubernetes clusters, workloads running within those clusters, virtual machines, or vSphere Pods.
Unlike the upstream Argo CD Operator, this operator is purpose-built by Broadcom to integrate directly into the VCF platform, enabling seamless lifecycle management, namespace-level access control, and native support for hybrid workloads.
Why Argo CD, Why Now?
Modern application delivery requires speed, consistency, and security. However, managing infrastructure and applications across mixed environments—like containers, virtual machines, and pods—can be error-prone and complex.
GitOps tools like Argo CD continuously synchronize your environment to match the desired state defined in Git—reducing drift, improving auditability, and empowering teams to automate with confidence.
Argo CD is one of the most trusted GitOps tools, offering pull-based, declarative deployment workflows. With this release, GitOps becomes a native part of the VCF platform, empowering teams to manage both traditional and modern workloads in a consistent, automated manner.
Under the Hood: Powered by Supervisor
This release is built on top of vSphere Supervisor—the control plane within VCF that exposes a declarative API and orchestrates services across Kubernetes, virtual machines, and infrastructure. It acts as the foundation that transforms VCF from virtualized infrastructure into a full-featured cloud platform, enabling consistent service delivery, policy enforcement, and self-service across environments.
With Supervisor, platform teams can:
- Create vSphere Namespaces with scoped access and resource quotas
- Support Kubernetes clusters, virtual machines, and vSphere Pods side-by-side
- Manage platform-level services declaratively using familiar tools like vCenter and CLI
Running the Argo CD Operator on Supervisor means GitOps can now reach across your entire private cloud footprint—from containerized workloads to VM-based services—all from a single Git source of truth.
How It Works: Admins and Cloud Users in Harmony
This first GA release of the Argo CD Operator introduces a clean separation of roles. The Argo CD Operator is deployed once by a Cloud Admin on the Supervisor, and from there, Cloud Users can self-service Argo CD instances scoped to their vSphere Namespace.
Each instance connects to a Git repository and manages workloads defined in code.
Cloud Admin Responsibilities
- Deploy and lifecycle-manage the Argo CD Operator using vCenter or CLI
- Configure namespace access, policies, and resource limits
- Maintain security boundaries and operational consistency
- Monitor and support the underlying infrastructure via Supervisor
Cloud User Responsibilities
- Instantiate an Argo CD instance scoped to their vSphere Namespace
- Configure Git repositories, sync strategies, and target clusters or VMs
- Use the instance to manage workloads across:
- VKS clusters
- Workloads on VKS clusters
- VMs
- vSphere Pods
This division of responsibilities enables platform teams to standardize tooling and guardrails, while empowering application teams to move faster with autonomy—without compromising governance or consistency.
The diagram below shows how Argo CD connects your Git repository to your workloads within a vSphere Namespace. Whether you’re managing virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, or applications, Argo CD keeps them in sync using declarative configuration—all while respecting the role boundaries and namespace isolation provided by Supervisor.
Key Benefits of Argo CD at a Glance
- Unified GitOps for all workloads from a single control plane—VMs, VKS clusters, and vSphere Pods
Applications always in sync with automated, continuous deployment - Simplify operations with hands-free updates from Git to runtime
- Define your entire stack as code that is reliable, repeatable, and fast
- Built for VCF—integrated for seamless install, lifecycle management, and security
What’s Included in This Release
✅ Argo CD Operator packaged as a Supervisor Service
✅ Requires vSphere Supervisor release 9.0.0.0100 which includes support for Supervisor version 1.30.10
✅ Supports VKS, workloads within VKS clusters, VM, and Pod workloads
✅ Declarative, Git-based deployment workflows
**Note on versioning: This GA release includes Argo CD v2.14.13, validated for stability, performance, and integration with VCF. While not the latest upstream version, it is fully tested for production use within this release and provides the core GitOps features teams need to get started confidently.
Supervisor-Native GitOps
Operator Lifecycle
The Argo CD Operator is deployed and lifecycle-managed by a Cloud Admin using either the vCenter UI or the provided CLI tooling. Once installed, the Operator runs on Supervisor and enables cloud users to self-service Argo CD instances within their assigned vSphere Namespaces.
Admins retain full control over:
- Installation and upgrades of the Operator
- Visibility into health and status via vCenter
- Access control and resource governance at the namespace level
This approach allows teams to maintain operational consistency across environments while offering GitOps as a self-service capability to Cloud users.
Instance Creation and Scope
Each Argo CD instance is scoped to a vSphere Namespace, aligning with Supervisor’s support for multi-tenancy and access isolation.
Each Argo CD instance:
- Is deployed within a vSphere Namespace
- Operates independently with its own Git repository, sync strategy, and deployment targets
- Respects the permissions and policies defined for that namespace
This allows teams to define, deploy, and manage infrastructure and applications using Git without needing to understand the underlying platform components.
Use Case Coverage
This design unlocks a wide range of GitOps-driven workflows across infrastructure and application layers:
- Create, update, and configure VKS clusters, virtual machines, and vSphere Pods all from a single Git repository
- Automate application deployment and configuration into VKS clusters using version-controlled manifests
- Use Git to manage virtual machines declaratively—provisioning, updating, or scaling VMs using YAML without manual UI steps
- Consistently deploy services into vSphere Pods alongside containerized or VM-based workloads
Whether you’re managing infrastructure or applications, Argo CD on VCF provides a consistent, auditable, and repeatable way to deliver everything as code.
Looking Ahead
This release marks the first step in our GitOps enablement strategy for VCF. By delivering a Broadcom-built Argo CD Operator, we’ve laid the foundation for declarative, version-controlled delivery across VMs, clusters, and workloads.
In future iterations, we will continue to expand capabilities, including:
- Integration with VCF Automation to enable Argo CD instance management directly through the VCF UI
- Enhanced service discovery to streamline environment configuration
- Secure credential injection for safer integration with private Git repos and registries
- Deeper observability and logging integration to help teams track and troubleshoot sync status and drift
We’re just getting started and we’re building toward a fully integrated GitOps experience that’s both powerful and manageable for users.
Start Your GitOps Journey
Ready to modernize your delivery workflows and bring GitOps to your private cloud?
The Argo CD Operator is now available with VCF 9.0 and the async Supervisor release 9.0.0.0100 which includes support for Supervisor version 1.30.10. Whether you’re managing Kubernetes clusters, virtual machines, or pod-based applications, you can now deliver them all declaratively—from a single Git source of truth.
Try it today and bring consistent, version-controlled automation to your infrastructure and applications.
Resources/Learn More
Discover more from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Blog
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
