What is VMware Cloud Foundation?
2026-10-28
As part of its development of software-defined data centers (SDDCs), the American technology company VMware introduced VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in 2016. The integrated software platform brought together the tools required to build and operate an SDDC, including vSphere, Virtual SAN (vSAN), NSX, and SDDC Manager. VCF later evolved into a comprehensive platform for building private and hybrid clouds with centralized management. Following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in November 2023, VMware Cloud Foundation became positioned as the company’s primary integrated platform for enterprise data centers and private clouds.
The platform combines vSphere for compute and virtualization, vSAN for software-defined storage, NSX for networking and security, and centralized lifecycle and operations management. SDDC Manager automates infrastructure provisioning, configuration, upgrades, patching, and day-to-day administration. VMware Cloud Foundation can also serve as a foundation for containerized applications and Kubernetes. This allows organizations to run traditional virtual-machine workloads and cloud-native applications within a single managed environment.