One Platform for All Workloads – VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

August 21, 2025August 21, 2025 Maciej Lelusz cloud, kubernetes, VCF 9.0, vmware

There’s an unwritten law in enterprise IT – by the time a product reaches version nine, it’s either a bloated legacy holdover or a truly refined platform. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 falls squarely into the latter category. Broadcom’s engineering team has listened to years of feedback from enterprises struggling to unify VM and container operations. The result is a platform that feels coherent, polished, and, dare we say it, actually cloud-like.

At the heart of this release sits Supervisor, a declarative API that finally unifies the management of virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and supporting services. For those of us used to juggling multiple tools, inconsistent CLIs, and a sprawl of YAML files, having a single, consistent consumption model is a welcome relief. Instead of worrying whether we’re deploying to “the VM side” or “the container side”, we describe the desired state and let the platform take care of the rest. It’s the kind of abstraction VMware has always promised, but here it feels tangible.

The revamped automation portal reinforces this experience. Logging in, we see projects, namespaces, and services in one place. Need a VM? Pick a template or ISO, tweak resources, and the system quietly generates the necessary spec. Need a Kubernetes cluster? Same workflow, just different options. The beauty lies in the consistency. Whether we’re provisioning infrastructure, attaching persistent storage, or requesting a load balancer, it all looks and feels the same. The infrastructure is still there, of course, but the complexity isn’t an operator problem anymore.

Extensibility is another area where VCF 9.0 shines. Rather than forcing us into a one-size-fits-all stack, VMware provides a catalog of services that can be added on demand. Secrets management, Harbor registries, and Istio for service mesh are just the beginning. Everything plugs into the same API framework, preserving that unified consumption model. It’s refreshingly different from the bolt-on “integrations” we’ve all endured over the years.

Then there’s GitOps. For far too long, customers wanting continuous delivery in a VMware ecosystem had to stitch together their own pipelines. With VCF 9.0, Argo CD is now baked into the platform. We can connect a Git repo, define workloads as code, and let Argo enforce the desired state automatically. Deploying a VM and a Kubernetes cluster from the same Git workflow is exactly the kind of practical modernization enterprises have been demanding. It’s not just flashy, it solves a real operational gap.

Lifecycle management has also been smartly rethought. Supervisor and Kubernetes services are now decoupled from the broader VCF upgrade cycle, so we get new features and versions faster, without the dreaded “big bang” upgrades. For admins, this means agility without chaos. For consumers, it means faster access to the tools they need. Yes, admins still hold the keys to which Kubernetes versions are enabled – so no, we can’t jump to 1.33 until they flip the switch, but we’ll take guardrails over the wild west any day.

Of course, this isn’t a silver bullet. We’re still dependent on governance policies, and some features feel like they’re arriving a year or two later than they should have. But the important point is that they’re here now, integrated, and ready for real-world use. When we deploy workloads in VCF 9.0, it genuinely feels like a self-service, policy-driven, and scalable private cloud rather than a collection of stitched-together products wearing a cloud badge.

In the end, VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 represents the strongest argument yet for enterprises to standardize on VMware for private cloud. We get a unified API, an extensible service catalog, built-in GitOps, and lifecycle management that finally respects our need for agility. It’s not perfect, and it’s certainly not the only game in town, but for organizations already invested in VMware, it’s a compelling foundation for the next phase of hybrid cloud strategy. And perhaps most importantly, with VCF 9.0, the private cloud no longer feels like the awkward cousin of the public one. It feels like the real deal.