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apiVersion: soultec.ch/v1kind: Solutionmetadata: name: vmware/vmware-cloud-foundation locale: en labels: vendor: VMware Cloud Foundation capability/cloud: 1.94 capability/virtualization: 1.37 capability/automation: 1.78 vendor/vmware: 0.88 annotations: source: src/content/solutions/en/vmware/vmware-cloud-foundation.md route: /en/solutions/vmware/vmware-cloud-foundation/ schema: /nerd/schema/solutions.json markdown: /en/solutions/vmware/vmware-cloud-foundation.mdspec: title: Cloud Foundation tags: [cloud, virtualization, automation] vendors: [vmware] summary: >- Compute, storage, network and operations as one product on one lifecycle, instead of four products with four maintenance windows. photoNeed: >- A vSphere or VCF console on a real screen at soulTec: a cluster view, a running task, an inventory tree, so the reader should recognise the UI stub: false draft: false kind: platform acronym: VCF addon: false vendorName: VMware Cloud Foundation status: current practice: >- Draft, not yet reviewed. Most of our VCF work is a migration out of a vSphere estate that grew over a decade, not a greenfield install. The effort is rarely in compute. It is in NSX, and in working out which firewall rules anyone can still justify. practiceReview: true sections: - heading:

What it is

body: | VMware Cloud Foundation, usually shortened to VCF, bundles vSphere, vSAN, NSX and the operations tooling into a single product. SDDC Manager knows the dependencies between those components and applies updates in an order that has been tested. That is the actual point. Run the pieces separately and you maintain a compatibility matrix by hand, and every update becomes its own project. - heading:

What it is for

body: | Private cloud in your own datacentre, built from standard blocks with an API in front of them. VCF is aimed at estates large enough that operational effort and standardisation outweigh the price of any single licence. For three hosts in a branch office it is the wrong tool. - heading:

What changed

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What it is for

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What it is for

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Solution · VMware

Cloud Foundation VCF

The vendor calls it: VMware Cloud Foundation

Compute, storage, network and operations as one product on one lifecycle, instead of four products with four maintenance windows.

VMware Pinnacle Partner

Topics Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37 Automation 1.78

Vendors VMware 0.88

04Services

06Posts

03Capabilities

267Corpus

photograph wantedA vSphere or VCF console on a real screen at soulTec: a cluster view, a running task, an inventory tree, so the reader should recognise the UI

What it is

VMware Cloud Foundation, usually shortened to VCF, bundles vSphere, vSAN, NSX and the operations tooling into a single product. SDDC Manager knows the dependencies between those components and applies updates in an order that has been tested.

That is the actual point. Run the pieces separately and you maintain a compatibility matrix by hand, and every update becomes its own project.

What it is for

Private cloud in your own datacentre, built from standard blocks with an API in front of them. VCF is aimed at estates large enough that operational effort and standardisation outweigh the price of any single licence.

For three hosts in a branch office it is the wrong tool.

What changed

Since Broadcom acquired VMware, VCF is the central offering and licensing is a per-core subscription. Anyone coming from an older perpetual estate is not renewing the same invoice. That belongs in the planning before the technical design does.

What we do with it

Draft, unreviewed

Draft, not yet reviewed. Most of our VCF work is a migration out of a vSphere estate that grew over a decade, not a greenfield install. The effort is rarely in compute. It is in NSX, and in working out which firewall rules anyone can still justify.

This paragraph is a draft and nobody at soulTec has confirmed it yet. Everything above it describes the product and is checkable against the vendor.

Posts about it

VCF full stack from October 2027 – myth or truth?

18 May 2026

A myth that will not go away, and one VMware's competitors are happy to repeat: “from October 2027 a full-stack VCF implementation is mandatory”. It simply is not true.

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37

Microsoft Secure Boot certificates expire in June 2026

7 May 2026

Microsoft is refreshing the Secure Boot certificates originally issued in 2011, so Windows systems keep verifying trusted boot software. The old ones expire in June 2026.

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37

VLR Appliance 9.0.4 – HBR-Agent can't be installed

12 Dec 2025

You installed VLR Appliance 9.0.4 and it will not install the Host Based Replication Agent for ESX. If you run a vSAN stretched cluster, there is a workaround.

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37

Fix NSX to Re-Import ESX into VCF

11 Oct 2025

If you stumble upon this blog chances are you are working on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x.

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37

Get Online Depot working in VCF 9

2 Sep 2025

In VMware Cloud Foundation 9 we can configure a Online Depot to get access to the Binaries for the Management as well as the Instance Components.

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37

DSM 9.0 – MS SQL as a Service

26 Jun 2025

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 brought VMware Data Services Manager (DSM) 9.0 with it. Alongside many improvements, the largest new feature is support for Microsoft SQL Server (tech preview).

Cloud 1.94 Virtualization 1.37