What’s New in Networking for VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1

Networking in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 receives major enhancements focused on scalability, interoperability, multi-tenancy, lifecycle simplification, and AI-era infrastructure requirements. These changes continue VMware’s strategy of integrating software-defined networking more closely with modern physical data center fabrics and cloud operating models.

For enterprise architects and cloud service providers, networking improvements in VCF 9.1 are among the most strategically important changes because they influence connectivity, security, workload mobility, and operational scale. 

Compute News in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 introduces several important compute enhancements focused on performance, scalability, AI workloads, memory efficiency, and operational flexibility. While storage improvements in vSAN receive significant attention, compute innovations in vSphere and ESXi are equally important for enterprise architects designing next-generation private cloud infrastructure.

This article explores the most important compute-related improvements in VCF 9.1 and their practical impact on enterprise and cloud service provider environments. 

Storage News in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 brings several important storage enhancements, mostly focused on VMware vSAN ESA, storage efficiency, cyber resilience, disaggregated storage, and new object storage capabilities.

From an enterprise architecture point of view, VCF 9.1 continues to transform vSAN from a traditional HCI datastore into a broader software-defined storage platform for private cloud. 

What’s New in VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 is an important release because it moves VCF further from a traditional virtualization stack toward a unified private cloud platform for virtual machines, Kubernetes, AI workloads, networking, security, lifecycle management, and operations.

Broadcom positions VCF 9.1 as an AI-ready and Kubernetes-native private cloud platform with integrated security and support for mixed compute infrastructure across AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA platforms. 

MS-SQL Windows Server Failover Clustering on VCF - Best Practices

MS-SQL Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) is used for MS-SQL High Availability deployment on VMware VCF. 

Traditional (historical) WSFC deployment model is Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) Always On Failover Cluster Instance (FCI). Always On Failover Cluster Instance is a Microsoft SQL Server high-availability technology that provides instance-level protection. This means that the entire SQL Server installation including binaries, system databases (like master and msdb), user databases, logins, and SQL Server Agent jobs, is protected and fails over as a single cohesive unit to another node in the cluster if a failure occurs. 

An FCI uses a virtual identity (virtual network name and IP address) that is independent of the underlying physical or virtual node names, allowing applications to connect seamlessly regardless of which node is active.

An FCI requires shared storage accessible by all nodes in the cluster and supporting SCSI-3 Persistent Reservations (PR). vSAN ESA is a perfect fit for such shared storage.

Let's document typical topics and best practices about WSFC/FCI.

Virtualization of Microsoft SQL and AD

Lot of customers are still dependent on Microsoft operating systems and applications. The most business critical applications are Active Directory and Microsoft SQL Server. Virtualization of these business critical systems is easy up to some scale and availability. When the scalability, performance and availability are top priority, your Technical Design is starting to be more complex. That's exactly where the fun starts,

Following four documents are great sources for any virtualization of business critical Enterprise application on VMware Platform.

Private VLANs (PVLANs) in VMware vSphere ESXi

Private VLANs (PVLANs) provide a powerful way to improve network segmentation and security without creating a large number of traditional VLANs. They allow traffic isolation within a single logical VLAN, which is especially useful in multi-tenant environments, DMZs, and enterprise application tiers. 

PVLAN explained - Promiscuous, Community, Isolated

Let's dive deeper. 

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Architecture and Fleet Components Latency

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 Architecture is prepared to cover the whole planet. If your business covers the whole globe you proably have datacenters at least in three regions where these regions are typically located at EMEA (Europe / EU), AMER (America / United States), APJ (Asia / Malaysia, India, etc.). 

For such deployments, you have to consider network latency and the following diagram is for you.

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Fleet Latency

However, there is also VCF Minimal Architecture starting with just 4 ESXi hosts (servers). 

In the rest of this blog post I will describe VCF terminology, VCF components and relationship between them.

VMware Certified Distinguished Expert (VCDX)

VMware is excited to announce the evolution of this iconic certification into a new, broader, and more inclusive framework: the VMware Certified Distinguished Expert (VCDX). This updated program extends beyond traditional design specializations and now welcomes a wider community of top-tier professionals, including Architects, Administrators, and Support specialists. The name change reflects a larger vision: to recognize excellence across all expert roles that shape, operate, and safeguard VMware Cloud Foundation environments at scale.

Introducing the VMware Certified Distinguished Expert (VCDX): A New Era for Elite Private Cloud Professionals.