Broadcom has updated its VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) private-cloud platform with what it said are faster infrastructure modernization, better cyber resiliency and security, and a better developer productivity experience.
In the announcement, Broadcom wrote: “VCF includes native Kubernetes to support both VM and containerized workloads on a single platform, enables advanced AI/ML workloads at enterprise scale, and offers integrated data services capabilities. IT can continuously optimize performance and costs, protect the business from threats, and enable the business to focus on outcomes instead of operations through advanced observability and insights.”
On the infrastructure modernization side, a new VCF Import capability lets organizations bring existing vSphere and vSAN environments into VCF, with the ability to manage and optimize resources without the need for a full rebuild of the customer environment, the company said. New support for vSAN Max and vSAN ESA gives users “petabyte scale disaggregated storage and active-active availability,” while the new VCF Edge allows optimized configurations for edge use cases.
For security, a new ESXi Live Patching lets administrators apply the updates to ESXi hosts without maintenance windows, the company announced, while a Flexible VCF Component upgrade can enable applying patches when upgrading to a new version of VCF. This, the company wrote, reduces downtime, streamlines patch management and enhances system reliability. To protect against DPU failures, Dual DPU support helps ensure continuity, isolates dual independent DPUs and doubles the offload capacity per host, and vSAN Data Protection gives IT admins the ability to protect and recover VMs from accidental deletions and ransomware attacks, among other enhancements
Now, VCF betters the cloud experience for developers with quick-start templates, network integration and performance data to simplify application development. VCF will offer Tanzu Kubernetes Grid as an independent service, enables developers to focus on coding and testing rather than dealing with intricate network requirements, aligning asynchronous TKG releases with Kubernetes to provide developers wirth the latest versions. Meanwhile, VCF networking lets developers focus on coding and innovation without having to deal with network requirements. Finally, VMware Avi Load Balancer gives IT the power to deploy load balancing “at the speed of applications,” the company said.\
“The excitement and associated concerns surrounding GenAI and data security reinforce the need for private clouds. Enterprises need to ensure that private corporate data does not find itself inside a public AI model,” said Dave McCarthy, Research Vice President, Cloud and Edge Services, Worldwide Infrastructure Research at IDC. “How customers choose to build private clouds will be driven by the unique requirements of each organization, such as updating legacy infrastructure, advancing the needs of their developer community, or creating a more secure and reliable environment to support a new generation of AI/ML applications. VMware Cloud Foundation continues to evolve as a private cloud platform, and the latest innovations Broadcom is delivering should help customers of all sizes accelerate adoption.”
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 is expected to be available in Broadcom’s fiscal third quarter.
