Announcing VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5 @ VMworld 2018

It’s Tuesday 6th November and I’m in the VMworld Europe 2018 General Session. Right now, something awesome is being announced! – VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5

VMware Cloud Foundation is an SDDC solution combining Compute (vSphere) Network (NSX) Storage (vSAN) and Management (vRealize Operations)

A full SDDC is automatically deployed via a manager to improve time to market and deployment consistency. In addition, adding ESXi hosts is completed via a single interface which configures all the required dependencies automatically. It can be used for both private and public cloud deployments, making it a suitable solution for customers and VMware partners.

So what’s new in VMware Cloud Foundation 3.5?

The first thing to discuss is the new Bill Of Materials – Now supporting latest versions of, well, everything!

• vSphere 6.7 U1
• vSAN 6.7 U1
• Log Insight vSAN Content pack 2.0
• NSX for vSphere 6.4.3
• NSX-T 2.3
• SDDC MAnager 3.5
• vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 2.0
• vRealize Automation 7.5
• vRealize OPerations 7.0
• vRealize Log insight 4.7

NSX-T is now supported in workload domains

We can now utilize NSX-T in workload domains. This means that NSX-T deployments can be fully automated per domain (With the exclusion of the Management domain, we still need NSX for vSphere for this right now)

NFS version 3.0 support

NFS (Only version 3.0 for now) can now be used in compute domains in addition to vSAN. When setting up a new workload domain we can now select vSAN or NFS as the storage layer

Composable Infrastructure

One of the most interesting updates here is that partners can utilise an API to provide Composable Infrastructure to VCF 3.5. HPE Synergy is the first Partner to be certified in this solution and the integration options going forward will be very interesting to follow.

Use Cases

What can you use VCF 3.5 for?

I think the slide below spells this out well but if you need more information try the following resources: