--- title: VMware Cloud Foundation Operations url: https://www.vmware.com/docs/vmw-vcf-operations-datasheet --- # VMware Cloud Foundation Operations Efficient Infrastructure & Operations at Scale Organizations can take the private cloud route as part of an overhaul of their IT infrastructure setup. A streamlined modern setup helps ensure improved performance and efficiency, increased reliability, a better overall security posture, and optimized costs. IT groups have their own set of challenges: - Customers are struggling to meet business needs while having a high-performing infrastructure. - Horizontally scaling the infrastructure leads to a visibility issue, slowing the troubleshooting process and delaying quick decisions. - Resource utilization is not optimal when a customer thinks of infrastructure modernization or consolidation projects. - AI-based applications that use containers and microservices can lead to increased infrastructure management costs. - Compliance and audit issues affecting the overall security posture. ## Key Outcomes VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations provides a single console for private cloud with integrated compute, storage, and network operations. There is also an available AI Assistant for VCF capability to help with diagnostics and management packs building. - Faster issue detection and resolution with consolidated diagnostics, logs, alerts, network topology, and insights. - Continuous performance monitoring to optimize VMware Cloud Foundation compute, storage, and network infrastructure resources. - Enhanced resource utilization for VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and existing workloads with real-time observability, cost management, and multisite operations. Capacity management for VM workloads. - Proactive security and strong compliance posture are driven by comprehensive visibility and regulatory standards to ensure compliance across the IT infrastructure. ## VMware Cloud Foundation VMware Cloud Foundation provides a flexible and simplified private cloud platform with public cloud extensibility that integrates leading products including vSphere (compute), vSAN (storage), NSX (networking), vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), VCF Operations, VCF Automation, and Private AI services into a single solution. VMware Cloud Foundation is a platform that enables you to modernize infrastructure, accelerate developer productivity, and provide greater resilience and security. ## Capabilities of VMware Cloud Foundation Operations VCF Operations delivers centralized, AI-powered visibility and control across your private cloud to continuously optimize infrastructure performance, capacity, and cost. VCF Operations orchestrator is a workflow engine designed to simplify the automation of complex IT tasks with the ability to build and trigger orchestrator workflows. VCF Operations workload mobility streamlines workload mobility and disaster recovery by providing seamless, secure application migration across distributed VCF environments without requiring application downtime. VCF Operations for networks offers end-to-end network visibility and analytics to optimize traffic flow, troubleshoot connectivity issues, and confidently plan micro-segmentation security policies. VCF Operations fleet management: Enables centralized administration, configuration, and lifecycle management of operational components across highly distributed Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC), multi-site deployments. VCF Operations collector acts as a secure, distributed data-gathering node that continuously ingests metrics and telemetry from local infrastructure endpoints into the central operations analytics engine. ## What’s New in VCF 9.1.1 for VCF Operations VMware Cloud Foundation Operations offers new capabilities for various people and roles who need to view applications and infrastructure environments when operating, troubleshooting, planning, and provisioning resources using integrated workflows to accelerate business agility and optimize cost, performance, and governance. ### VCF 9.1.1 - **Platform Operations** - **VKS & App Observability** - **VKS Observability** - **Multi-Cluster VKS Monitoring** - **Grafana Dashboard Import** - **Infrastructure Ops** - **Fleet-Wide Management & Security** - **Enhanced Centralized Certifications & Passwords** - **Configuration Management** - **Identity & IPv6 Licensing enhancements** - **AI-Powered Ops** - **AI Assistant** - **AI Assistant for VCF (Diagnostics)** - **AI Assistant for VCF (Management Packs Builder)** ### Build for VCF 9.1 **Scale Improvements** - VCF per-instance scale increased to 5,000 ESX hosts (2x improvement). - Parallel upgrade scale improved to 256 clusters at a time (4x improvement). ### VCF Installer Improvements - Improved UI, reduced input, and improved workflow. ### Lifecycle Management (LCM) Operations - Simplified deployment and patching. - Improved upgrade and patch monitoring alerts and notifications for warnings or failures. - Improved troubleshooting and remediation steps for known and unknown issues. ### Manage for VCF 9.1 **Identity and Access (IAM)** - End-to-end workflow for SSO and roles. - Persona-based roles to delegate specific permissions. VCF roles for functions such as admin, operator, planner, and auditor. - Service Accounts & API access. ## Key Benefits - Unified visibility - Lower costs - Increased operational efficiency - Faster time to resolution - Reduced risk ## Key Features - Fleet-level licensing, identity management and SSO, certificates, tags, passwords, configurations with drift detection and lifecycle. - Real-time, predictive capacity and cost analytics and continuous performance optimization. - Monitoring for Kubernetes containers, VMs, and AI workloads. - Enhanced troubleshooting experience with consolidated diagnostics, metrics, logs, events, and network insights. - Continuous compliance enables organizations to reduce risks and ensure regulatory compliance standards are enabled with the VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance Add-on Advanced Service. ### Password Management - Password Policy enforcement. - CyberArk plugin integration for password management. ### Certificate Management - Certificate support for standalone vCenter 8.0 U3+, workload mobility (HCX), and AVI ALB. - Third-Party CA integrations via APIs. - Bulk operations (renew, replace, etc.). ### Tag Management - Tags defined and assigned directly from VCF Ops for hosts and clusters. ## What’s New in VCF 9.1 for VCF Operations 1. Note that for Protect, there are compliance and security posture management capabilities that will require the VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance Add-on Advanced Service ## Operate for VCF 9.1 ### Next Gen Ops Platform - Real-Time monitoring for VCF infrastructure. - Comprehensive log management support within VCF Operations. - AI-Ready Platform with APIs to integrate with customer’s RAG and MCP. ### Infrastructure Operations - Health and Diagnostics for all VCF components. - Troubleshooting Workbench enhancements. - Workload Operations VKS Monitoring OOTB. - Prometheus Support (Management Pack Builder, PromQL API). ## Protect for VCF 9.1 - Compliance1 Security Posture Management dashboard with compliance (ACC). - Support for PCI (ACC). - Support for Security Configuration Guide, VCF 9 Security Baseline (ACC). - Security Forensics Audit trail for Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM). - Audit records with audit events/logs for VKS. - Historical Diagnostics findings. - SecOps Improved SecOps Dashboard including confidential computing. ## Feature Comparison Comparing VMware Cloud Foundation Operations capabilities across VMware Cloud Foundation, VMware Cloud Foundation Edge, and VMware vSphere Foundation. ### Feature Comparison | VCF Operations Features | VMware vSphere Foundation | VMware Cloud Foundation (Edge) | VMware Cloud Foundation Platform | |--------------------------------------------------|---------------------------|---------------------------------|----------------------------------| | Single Sign-On | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Lifecycle Management | No | Yes | Yes | | License Management (IPv4 / IPv6) | No | Yes | Yes | | Certificate Management | No | Yes | Yes | | Password Management | No | Yes | Yes | | Configuration Management 1 | No | Yes | Yes | | Tag Management | No | Yes | Yes | | Built-In high availability (Automated Failover of Platform Nodes) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Continuous Availability | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Energy efficiency metric | Yes | Yes | Yes | | VCF Operations orchestrator | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Visibility | | | | | Dashboards | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Reports | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Views | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Heat maps | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Performance charts | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Alerts | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Flow visibility for network traffic | No | Yes | Yes | | Custom webhook payload templates | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Custom email notification templates | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Super Metrics, Metric Correlation and Event Mapping | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Performance | | | | | Performance Monitoring and Analytics | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Manual Workload Optimization | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Predictive Distributed Resource Scheduling DRS | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Business and Operational Intent-Based | | | | | Automated and Schedulable Workload Balancing and Optimization | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Host-Based Placement | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Automation Central | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Monitoring and Troubleshooting | | | | | Real-time Monitoring | No | Yes | Yes | | AI Assistant for VCF (diagnostics) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | VCF Health | Yes | Yes | Yes | | VCF Diagnostics | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Physical Datacenter monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Troubleshooting Workbench | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Storage Operations | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Network Operations | Yes | Yes | Yes | | GPU and vGPU Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Log Query | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Log Partitioning | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Dashboard for Data Protection and Recovery | Yes (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance add-on) | (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance add-on) | | | Monitoring of OS Resources using Telegraf (CPU, Disk, Memory, Network) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Service and Process Monitoring (OS level only) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Physical OS Monitoring with Telegraf | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Application Discovery (flows, rules, service, and names) | No | Yes | Yes | | Rule-based Application Discovery | No | Yes | Yes | | Application monitoring with Open-Source Telegraf | No | Yes | Yes | | Curated Application monitoring with Telegraf Agent | No | Yes | Yes | | Supervisor Cluster Monitoring (Metrics, logs and Dashboards) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Cluster Monitoring | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Antrea IPFIX Flows for VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) Clusters | No | Yes | Yes | | Capacity and Cost | | | | | Predictive Capacity Management | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Capacity Optimization: Rightsizing and Reclamation | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Workload Optimization | Yes | Yes | Yes | | What-If analysis (Workload, Infrastructure and Migration) | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Total Cost of Ownership | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Potential Savings | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Chargeback (Tenant Operations and Metering) | No | Yes | Yes | | vSphere Kubernetes Service Costing | Yes | Yes | Yes | | NVMe Memory Tiering Recommendations | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Protect | | | | | Compliance drift and remediation1 | No (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | | | VCF Security Configuration Guide 1 | No (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | | | PCI DSS 1 | No (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | (requires VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance advanced service add-on) | | | Audit events | Yes | Yes | Yes | | SecOps Dashboards | No | Yes | Yes | | Security Advisory Diagnostics | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Integrations | | | | | Management and Content Packs | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Integration SDK | Yes | Yes | Yes | | API to integrate with RAG and MCP | Yes | Yes | Yes | | AI Assistant for VCF (Management Pack Builder) | No | Yes | Yes | | Management Pack Builder | Yes | Yes | Yes | | VMware Marketplace | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Advanced APIs: Resource/Data Addition, Report Generation and Automation | No | Yes | Yes | | VMware Cloud Foundation Operations HCX | No | Yes | Yes | | Microsoft SQL Server | No | Yes | Yes | | MongoDB | No | Yes | Yes | | MySQL | No | Yes | Yes | | Network Devices | No | Yes | Yes | | Oracle Database | No | Yes | Yes | | PostgreSQL | Yes | Yes | Yes | 1. There are compliance and security posture management capabilities that will require the VMware Advanced Cyber Compliance Add-on Advanced Service