Broadcom announced a simplification in their licensing model on December 11, since that time there has been mixed feelings within the industry, particularly around the shift to subscription and possible cost increases. This post aims to demonstrate some of the potential business value that can come from access to more products in the VMware Cloud Foundation offering.
The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offering includes the following products;
- SDDC Manager
- vSphere Enterprise Plus
- vCenter Standard
- vSphere with Tanzu
- ESXi
- vSAN Enterprise (1TiB/Core)
- NSX Enterprise Plus (NSX Networking only)
- HCX Enterprise
- Aria Suite Enterprise
- Aria Suite Lifecycle (previously vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager)
- Aria Automation (previously vRealize Automation)
- Aria Operations (previously vRealize Operations)
- Aria Operations for Logs (previously vRealize Log Insight)
- Aria Operations for Network (previously vRealize Network Insight)
It also provides access to a several add-ons that can be purchased separately, such as;
- VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery (VCDR)
- VMware Load Balancer (NSX Advanced Load Balancer)
- Tanzu Mission Control (TMC)
- Tanzu Application Platform (TAP)
An excellent resource is William’s blog post that provides more information on the offerings and lists all of the add-ons: What’s in the new VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) offers?.
This post will not go into detail about each product or why they might be licensed the way they are, instead it will attempt to identify opportunities that these products could bring to the business.
Value is relative to the company, typically stakeholders, whether that is IT or other business functions, will decide what is of value and this usually aligns with the priorities of the business. For the sake of this post we will generalise and work on the basis that… Value is something that brings a positive change to the business, either through efficiency, cost saving or risk reduction.
| Product | Efficiency | Cost Saving | Risk Reduction |
|---|---|---|---|
| SDDC Manager | Automates deployment, configuration, upgrading, and patching of the VCF stack (vCenter, ESXi, NSX), simplifying operations and reducing manual labour. | Reduces the need for manual deployments and configurations that require lengthy designing and planning. | Reduces the operational risk of workloads breaking during upgrades and patches. Security risk is reduced due to the ability to quickly patch an environment. |
| vSphere Enterprise Plus | Enhances operational efficiency and transforms existing infrastructure. Maximises infrastructure capacity utilisation and improves workload performance. | Achieves better price performance using the latest technology on industry-standard servers. | Decreases downtime and improves reliability with predictive analytics and built-in high availability capabilities. |
| vSAN Enterprise | Simplifies storage management and scales elastically in per-server increments. | Reduces storage cost and complexity, and achieves better price performance using the latest storage technology on industry-standard servers. | Ensures data protection and availability. |
| NSX Enterprise Plus | Automates network management, saving time and effort. | Reduces network provisioning time and improves operational efficiency through automation, allowing businesses can roll out new services faster. | Provides consistent management of networking and security policies, independent of physical network topology, reducing the risk of outages and strengthens network infrastructure security. |
| HCX Enterprise | Supports non-vSphere workload migration into vSphere, allowing businesses to migrate large quantities of virtual workloads from different environments, providing flexibility and reducing the time and effort required for migration. | Multiple appliances bundled as one service, with automated functions, eliminates the need for different tools, reducing TCO. | Minimizes risk by providing a mobility platform across environments by abstracting the underlying infrastructure, reducing the risk of migration failures, data loss and downtime, which help ensure the continuity of operations. |
| Aria Suite Lifecycle | Accelerates deployment and upgrades of the Aria Suite products. | Reduces ongoing management and operational costs. | Enforces alignment with VMware recommended reference architectures and validated designs, reducing the risk of non-compliance. |
| Aria Automation | Removes the requirement for manual tasks with advanced workflows and infrastructure as code. | Reduces the total cost of ownership by freeing up IT budget and resources that can be reallocated elsewhere. | Establishes consistent policies across multi-cloud environments, reduces human error through automated infrastructure deployment. |
| Aria Operations | Provides continuous performance and capacity optimisation, with intelligent remediation. | Reduces operating expenses and increases operational efficiency by reducing troubleshooting times and improving resolution time. | Reduces risk and enforces regulatory standards with integrated compliance. Can help identify under utilised and at risk infrastructure components. |
| Aria Operations for Logs | Extensible across physical, virtual, and cloud environments, enabling administrators to have a single location to collect, store, and analyse logs at scale. | Reduces operating expenses and increases operational efficiency by reducing troubleshooting times and improving resolution time. | Provides visibility into security-related events, mitigating costs from unplanned downtime, by using predictive analytics, machine learning, and root cause analysis tools. |
| Aria Operations for Network | Provides network visibility and analytics to accelerate application discovery and optimise network performance. | Reduces time spent monitoring the network, leading to cost savings. | Minimises the risk during application migration through discovery and identifies missing firewall policies. |
This is a slightly different post to my usual, but hopefully with all of the recent changes within the VMware by Broadcom landscape, this provides some insight into where the VMware Cloud Foundation offering can benefit the business.
