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VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail provides the simplest path to the hybrid cloud. By deploying Cloud Foundation on VxRail, customers get full-stack integration with both the HCI infrastructure layer and VMware cloud software stack. Automated life-cycle management is provided as a single, complete, turnkey hybrid cloud experience, greatly reducing risk and increasing IT operational efficiency.
The VxRail HCI System Software includes a suite of leading-edge capabilities for VxRail that offer a highly differentiated experience. The most-used and most familiar feature of the VxRail HCI System Software is the VxRail Manager (available now as a vCenter plug-in), which is the primary deployment and element manager for VxRail.
VCF on VxRail uses VxRail Manager to deploy and configure vSphere clusters that are powered by vSAN. It is also used to run the Lifecycle Manager (LCM) of VMware ESXi, vSAN, and firmware using a fully integrated and seamless process that is orchestrated by SDDC Manager. It monitors the health of hardware components and provides remote service support.
SDDC Manager orchestrates the deployment, configuration, and LCM of vCenter, and NSX that is above the ESXi and vSAN layers of VxRail. It unifies multiple VxRail clusters as a workload domain (WLD) or as multiple WLDs. For multiple-availability zones (multi-AZs), SDDC Manager creates the stretched cluster configuration for a dual-availability zone (AZ) WLD.
VMware NSX Data Center is the network virtualization and security platform that enables the virtual cloud network. It is a software-defined approach to networking that extends across data centers, clouds, endpoints, and edge locations. With NSX Data Center, network functions—including switching, routing, firewalling, and load balancing—are brought closer to the application and distributed across the environment. Similar to the operational model of virtual machines, networks can be provisioned and managed independent of underlying hardware. NSX Data Center reproduces the entire network model in software, enabling any network topology—from simple to complex multitier networks—to be created and provisioned in seconds. Users can create multiple virtual networks with diverse requirements, leveraging a combination of services that are offered by NSX. You can build more agile and secure environments with services that include micro-segmentation and third-party integrations from a broad ecosystem, ranging from next-generation firewalls to performance-management solutions. These services can be extended to several endpoints within and across clouds.
Part of the vRealize Suite, vRealize Automation provides enhanced support to NSX to implement network automation, and vRealize Operations allow centralized capabilities for performance, capacity configuration, and compliance management. vRealize Log Insight provides heterogeneous and highly scalable log management with intuitive, actionable dashboards, sophisticated analytics, and broad third-party extensibility, providing deep operational visibility and faster troubleshooting.
The cloud management platform (CMP) is the main consumption portal for the SDDC. You can use vRealize Automation to author, administer, and consume VM templates and blueprints. As an integral component of VCF, vRealize Automation provides a unified service catalog that gives IT or users the ability to select and run requests to instantiate specific services.