I’m pleased to announce the release of the VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 Architecture Poster
VMware Cloud Foundation includes the full software-defined data center stack including compute, storage, networking, cloud management, and workload migration. This major release has increased hardware flexibility with support for customer-defined networking and broad support for all vSAN ReadyNodes. VMware Cloud Foundation has so many tightly integrated products, it is important to understand the architecture of these components and how together they create the Software-Defined Data Center. The creation of this poster allows us to give you a visual perspective of the underlying architectural elements.
Beyond the new hardware support, I want to highlight some other enhancements in this new release. Starting with Multi-Cluster workload domains.
As depicted in the poster, VMware Cloud Foundation deploys a management workload domain that contains all of the Cloud Foundation management VMs. From there, up to 14 more Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Workload Domains can be created. Each VI Workload domain has its own vSphere vCenter server and NSX manager, and controllers. Within each VI Workload Domain, multiple clusters can be added up to the vSphere maximums. A popular use case for this architecture is to create a VI Workload Domain for each IT business unit. For instance, The Cloud Admin could create a VI Workload Domain for ERP application servers, and another for Linux application servers. The admins in each IT business unit can then have their own vSphere vCenter server and NSX manager allowing them to have greater control of their own infrastructure for security and licensing compliance. Using role-based access controls each IT business unit would only be able to see or control the infrastructure they are responsible for. While the Cloud Admin would have visibility and control across all Workload Domains with Enhanced link mode.
Included with VMware Cloud Foundation Enterprise is NSX Hybrid Connect. This software quickly and easily is capable of extending your Layer 2 networks across clouds allowing you the freedom to move your application workloads between on-premises clouds.
NSX Hybrid Connect installs several appliance VMs that create a hybrid mobility tunnel through your existing network. Application VMs can then be Live Migrated between clouds with an easy to use interface. Other features include vMotion, Bulk Migration, High Throughput Network Extension, WAN optimization, Traffic Engineering, Load Balancing, Automated VPN with Strong encryption and disaster recovery. NSX Hybrid Connect also supports migration from legacy vSphere versions going back to vSphere 5.0 and up. This powerful tool creates a true hybrid cloud experience.
As you can see from what I have highlighted here, VMware Cloud Foundation 3.0 creates a powerful hybrid cloud architecture for your private cloud. If you have questions about Cloud Foundation, please click on the link to the poster below and post a question in our communities forum. You can also reach out to us on Twitter @vmwcf
Resources
VMware Cloud Foundation Poster
https://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-38625
