Broadcom's offering for running enterprise VMs and containers, bundling vSphere and vSAN with simplified deployment and operations management. VCF builds on it, adding the integrated automation and cloud management that VVF does not include.
Also called VMware vSphere Foundation.
Read more: Broadcom TechDocs
In the Ultra Transcenders books
Each book explains VVF in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.
Terms in this definition
- Enterprise
Any group of organisations with shared goals. Examples range from an entire company or one of its divisions to a government department, or several organisations working as partners or along a supply chain.
- Virtual machines
Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.
- vSphere
VMware's platform for virtualisation, made up of vCenter and ESX hosts, supplying compute for VCF clusters.
- vSAN
VMware's software-defined storage, which combines local devices across a cluster's ESX hosts into one shared datastore. Available as OSA or ESA, VCF can use it as principal storage.
- Model deployment
Inside a resource, each deployment is a named copy of a Foundry model with its own TPM quota and deployment type. Requests identify the model by this deployment name.
- VMware Cloud Foundation
Broadcom's platform for private cloud. It unifies management of NSX, vSAN, vSphere, VCF Automation and VCF Operations as one fleet; VVF, by contrast, lacks automation and cloud management.
Related terms
- Authentication provider
Chosen once VCF Operations orchestrator is deployed, this is what signs users in: VCF SSO, vSphere or VCF Automation. Because orchestrator also gets its licensing here, VVF deployments usually pick vSphere.
- CRX
The Container Runtime Executive, a lightweight runtime on ESX hosts that behaves much like a VM and uses a paravirtualised Linux kernel. It runs vSphere Pods on a Supervisor with VM-grade isolation; because vSphere Pods require NSX, they belong to VCF rather than VVF.
- Local Consumption Interface
Gives developers a UI for creating and managing their own VMs, volumes, VKS clusters and networking within a vSphere Namespace, delivered as a Supervisor Service. VVF relies on it for self-service, whereas in VCF that job falls to VCF Automation.
- Planning and Preparation Workbook
A spreadsheet that gathers all the values needed to deploy VCF or VVF, contains the checklist of prerequisites and assists with sizing.
- Spherelet
VMware's native ESX port of the kubelet, running on each Supervisor host so that the host can act as a Kubernetes worker node. It is what allows vSphere Pods to run, which depend on NSX and so belong to VCF rather than VVF.
- vSphere Pod
Runs Kubernetes containers straight on ESX in a Supervisor, inside a tiny VM with its own Linux kernel for strong isolation. It depends on NSX, so it comes with VCF rather than VVF.