VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 is now Available!
This release brings a lot of new features to Cloud Foundation the main one is support for VSAN ESA , however the VSAN ESA is not supported for stretched cluster, and there’s no conversion from vSAN OSA to vSAN ESA.
We now support vSAN ESA for both the management domain and VI Workload domains. That’s right, we can do bringup and use ESA, pretty cool!
Deploying a VI WLD/cluster with vSAN ESA is available through the UI and API.
For more information about vSAN ESA, please check out this here
Deprecation Notices
The VMware Imaging Appliance (VIA), included with the VMware Cloud Builder appliance to image ESXi servers, is deprecated and removed.
Starting with VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1, Configuration Drift Bundles are no longer needed as part of the upgrade process and are now deprecated.
The Composable Infrastructure feature is deprecated in VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1 and will be removed in a future release.
What's New in VCF 5.1 :
The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.1 release includes the following:
Support for vSAN ESA: vSAN ESA is an alternative, single-tier architecture designed ground-up for NVMe-based platforms to deliver higher performance with more predictable I/O latencies, higher space efficiency, per-object based data services, and native, high-performant snapshots.
Non-DHCP option for Tunnel Endpoint (TEP) IP assignment: SDDC Manager now provides the option to select Static or DHCP-based IP assignments to Host TEPs for stretched clusters and L3 aware clusters.
vSphere Distributed Services engine for Ready nodes: AMD-Pensando and NVIDIA BlueField-2 DPUs are now supported. Offloading the Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS) and NSX network and security functions to the hardware provides significant performance improvements for low latency and high bandwidth applications. NSX distributed firewall processing is also offloaded from the server CPUs to the network silicon.
Multi-pNIC/Multi-vSphere Distributed Switch UI enhancements: VCF users can configure complex networking configurations, including more vSphere Distributed Switch and NSX switch-related configurations, through the SDDC Manager UI.
Distributed Virtual Port Group Separation for management domain appliances: Enables the traffic isolation between management VMs (such as SDDC Manager, NSX Manager, and vCenter) and ESXi Management VMkernel interfaces
Support for vSphere Lifecycle Manager images in management domain:VCF users can deploy management domain using vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) images during new VCF instance deployment
Mixed-mode Support for Workload Domains: A VCF instance can exist in a mixed BOM state where the workload domains are on different VCF 5.x versions. Note: The management domain should be on the highest version in the instance.
Asynchronous update of the pre-check files: The upgrade pre-checks can be updated asynchronously with new pre-checks using a pre-check file provided by VMware.
Workload domain NSX integration: Support for multiple NSX enabled VDSs for Distributed Firewall use cases
Tier-0/1 optional for VCF Edge cluster: When creating an Edge cluster with the VCF API, the Tier-0 and Tier-1 gateways are now optional.
VCF Edge nodes support static or pooled IP: When creating or expanding an Edge cluster using VCF APIs, Edge node TEP configuration may come from an NSX IP pool or be specified statically as in earlier releases.
Support for mixed license deployment: A combination of keyed and keyless licenses can be used within the same VCF instance.
Integration with Workspace ONE Broker: Provides identity federation and SSO across vCenter, NSX, and SDDC Manager. VCF administrators can add Okta to Workspace ONE Broker as a Day-N operation using the SDDC Manger UI.
VMware vRealize rebranding: VMware recently renamed vRealize Suite of products to VMware Aria Suite. See the Aria Naming Updates blog post for more details..
VMware Validated Solutions: All VMware Validated Solutions are updated to support VMware Cloud Foundation 5.1. Visit VMware Validated Solutions for the updated guides.
BOM updates: Updated Bill of Materials with new product versions.
vSAN HCI MESH :
HCI Mesh is only supported OSA and ESA . Mixing of HCI Mesh is not supported.
HCI Mesh is compute only nodes are supported.
Cross VC HCI Mesh is not supported form VCF UI/API.
Important:
VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail 5.1 has a different planned release date. Therefore, we advise customers who are currently running VCF on VxRail to wait until the release of VMware Cloud Foundation on VxRail 5.1 is available before proceeding with the upgrade.
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