VCF for VPC overview
VMware Cloud Foundation for VPC provides a ubiquitous hybrid cloud platform for both traditional enterprise apps and modern apps. VCF for VPC is based on a comprehensive software-defined stack, which includes VMware vSphere® with VMware Tanzu™, VMware vSAN™, VMware NSX-T™ Data Center, and VMware Aria® Suite (formerly VMware vRealize® Suite). It provides a complete set of software-defined services for compute, storage, network security, Kubernetes management, and cloud management. The VMware Cloud Builder automates the initial deployment of the entire software-defined stack, and after the initial deployment it is managed with SDDC manager. The result is agile, reliable, and efficient. The cloud infrastructure offers consistent operations across private and public clouds.
The IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud provides the underlying infrastructure for running VCF for VPC in IBM Cloud. IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers on IBM Cloud VPC provide you with compute capacity provisioned in minutes for your VCF for VPC deployment. The VCF for VPC provisioning is done in a similar way that you deploy on-premises. However, it happens in a much more agile way in a secure and isolated virtual network inside your IBM Cloud VPC.
Key benefits
The VCF for VPC architecture provides you with the fundamental building blocks, which include vSphere, VMware vCenter Server, NSX-T, vSAN, and SDDC manager. The VMware Cloud Builder appliance automates the VCF for VPC deployment, including the entire VMware software-defined stack. After the initial provisioning, you have the same architecture and user experience as in on-premises VCF for VPC deployments. Using Aria® Suite Lifecycle Manager (formerly vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager), you can deploy more Aria Suite components, depending on the selected VCF for VPC edition.
VMware Solutions on IBM Cloud VPC has the following key benefits:
- IBM Cloud VPC gives you the ability to easily and rapidly define and control a virtual network, which is logically isolated from all other tenants. The logical isolation is implemented by using virtual network functions and security that is built into the platform.
- Provisioning the IBM Cloud bare metal servers on IBM Cloud VPC takes minutes instead of hours when compared to IBM Cloud bare metal servers on IBM Cloud classic.
- VMware workloads by running in IBM Cloud VPC can take advantage of all original functions for IBM Cloud® Virtual Private Cloud (IBM Cloud VPC) networking capabilities and other IBM Cloud interconnectivity services.
With this single-tenant IBM Cloud bare metal server infrastructure that is provided in IBM Cloud VPC, you can quickly deploy network, compute, and storage capacity for your VCF for VPC to the IBM Cloud.
Unlike the managed service offerings, VCF for VPC on IBM Cloud VPC gives you flexibility to design a solution for your needs, and it provides you full and complete access to all components.
Supported VCF for VPC architecture models in IBM Cloud VPC
VCF for VPC supports two architecture models - Standard and Consolidated. You can select your preferred architecture according to the specific requirements of your organization, such as the size of the deployment, the level of scalability needed. Both architecture models are supported for VCF for VPC on IBM Cloud.
In VCF for VPC Standard, the management and workload domains are deployed on separate sets of physical servers. This architecture is recommended for larger-scale deployments that require more capacity and scalability. The management domain is responsible for managing the overall infrastructure, while the workload domain is used to run specific workloads.
VCF for VPC Consolidated Architecture combines the management and workload domains on a single set of physical servers. This architecture is recommended for smaller-scale deployments.
In both architecture models, VCF for VPC provides a unified software-defined data center platform that includes vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and SDDC Manager. The main benefit of using VCF for VPC is that it simplifies the deployment and management of the software-defined data center infrastructure by providing a single integrated solution that reduces the complexity of deploying and configuring multiple VMware products.
For more information, see Supported VCF for VPC architecture models.
Supported VCF for VPC products in IBM Cloud VPC
The following components are installed by the IBM® automation, and licenses for them are provided by IBM.
- vSphere Enterprise Plus
- vCenter Standard
- SDDC Manager
- vSAN Enterprise
- NSX Enterprise Plus
- Aria Suite Lifecycle
The following components are not installed by the IBM automation, but licenses for them are provided by IBM. You can install them separately after the VCF for VPC instance is deployed. For more information, see Deploying VMware validated solutions.
- Aria Suite Enterprise (Aria Operations Enterprise, Aria Operations for Logs, and Aria Automation Enterprise)
- Aria Operations for Networks Enterprise
- VMware HCX Enterprise
- Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
The following components are not installed by the IBM automation. They are optional and require add-on licenses. You can order them from the IBM Cloud® console. For more information, see VMware add-ons for VMware Cloud Foundation.
- NSX Distributed Firewall
- NSX Gateway Firewall
- NSX Load Balancer