In a standard deployment, the Cloud Foundation management workload domain consists of workloads supporting the virtual infrastructure, cloud operations, cloud automation, business continuity, and security and compliance components for the SDDC. Using SDDC Manager, separate workload domains are allocated to tenant or containerized workloads. In a consolidated architecture, the Cloud Foundation management workload domain runs both the management workloads and tenant workloads.

There are limitations to the consolidated architecture model that must be considered that will impact this decision-making process.

• The decision to deploy a consolidated architecture must be made at the time of deployment, as a consolidated architecture cannot be converted to a standard architecture.
• Use cases that require a VI workload domain to be configured to meet specific application requirements cannot run on a consolidated architecture. The singular management workload domain cannot be tailored to support management functionality and these use cases. If your plans include applications that require a specialized VI workload domain, plan to deploy a standard architecture.
• Life-cycle management can be applied to individual VI workload domains in a standard architecture. If the applications targeted for Cloud Foundation on VxRail have strict dependencies on the underlying platform, consolidated architecture is not an option.
• Autonomous licensing can be used in a standard architecture, where licensing can be applied to individual VI workload domains. In a consolidated architecture, this is not an option.
• Scalability in a consolidated architecture has less flexibility than a standard architecture. Expansion is limited to the underlying VxRail cluster or clusters supporting the single management workload domain in a consolidated architecture, as all resources are shared. The minimum node count is eight for a standard architecture. Dell-Technologies recommends that any workload requirements that will require eight or more nodes should plan for a deployment using a standard architecture.
• If a VxRail cluster was built using two Ethernet ports, consolidating VxRail traffic and NSX-T traffic, additional nodes added to a cluster are limited to two Ethernet ports being used for Cloud Foundation for VxRail.
• VxRail nodes of differing network port speeds cannot be mixed in a VxRail cluster. If the workload is constrained due to network bandwidth and/or throughput, expanding the cluster with nodes that support higher port speeds is not an option.