Home > Storage > PowerFlex > White Papers > Using Dell PowerFlex with VMware Cloud Foundation > Executive summary
VMware Cloud Foundation, or VCF, is a complete software-defined infrastructure platform that encompasses all the required components to run a private, public, or hybrid cloud. The heart of VCF is the software-defined data center, or SDDC Manager. From the SDDC Manager, the user can control all aspects of the VCF environment, providing a single management interface. The other components of the VCF platform include vSphere for compute, vSAN for storage, NSX for networking, and the VMware Aria Suite (optional) for management.
VCF uses a concept of domains. The management domain is the heart of the VCF implementation and requires vSAN storage. It is responsible for hosting the management plane VMs (SDDC Manager, vCenter Server, NSX Manager) but it can also host customer VMs in a consolidated architecture. A workload domain is designed to run customer workloads. A single vCenter Server instance manages workload domains and can consist of one or more vSphere clusters. A workload domain offers the flexibility of using various storage solutions other than vSAN, such as VMFS on FC, vVols, and NFS. This permits the use of more robust storage array solutions like PowerFlex, which support VMFS on FC over IP using the Storage Data Client, not Fibre Channel.
The Storage Data Client (SDC) is a lightweight device driver that exposes Dell PowerFlex volumes as block devices to hosts where it is installed. This process is done over a standard IP network. VMware can support the SDC installed on an ESXi workload domain host because the SDC presents as an HBA adapter. ESXi recognizes the adapter as it would any FC adapter, allowing VMFS datastores that are created on SDC-presented devices. The SDC also offers remote replication, providing a robust disaster recovery solution for VCF.
This paper provides an overview of how to implement SDC as FC with VCF when deployed on a PowerFlex platform. It covers deployment of both the management and workload domain, configuration of the SDC on ESXi workload domain nodes, and discusses life cycle management with VCF.
Note: PowerFlex does not support VMware Virtual Volumes with PowerFlex 4.x. Therefore, it is not an available option for VCF storage.