Infrastructure Boundaries, Controls, and Policies with VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0

Diving Deeper into Self Service VCF Boundaries VCF Policies VCF Automation Policies Discover more from VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Blog Related Articles A Decision Framework for Future-Proofing IT Infrastructure Infrastructure Boundaries, Controls, and Policies with VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Analyst Insight Series: Virtualization virtue #3: Supporting application modernization As a Solutions Architect here at Broadcom who talks to our customer engineers on the daily, the biggest feedback I get about VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 is a fear (we’ll call it) about having less control with a self service model: “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. ” First of all, you will be doing it yourself through the enforcement of boundaries and policies at the onset. You don’t lose control : it is just front-loaded and implemented by applying the policies and boundaries at provisioning. With this approach you actually have more control with less administrative overhead. Second of all, if you are an infrastructure engineer, you are part of “ self” in “ self service” : in a cloud operating model, you will create infrastructure resources the same way everyone else does: using VCF Automation and Operations where your boundaries and restrictions are imposed in a standard and uniform way. Before we dive in, I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention that VMware infrastructure as a private cloud is not new. Most of the components mentioned below have been around for more than a decade, and they are in the driver’s seat with VCF. If you are a cloud engineer of any sort, you will find yourself right at home with VCF: that’s the whole point. I have talked about this before , albeit indirectly, but like it or not, you provide infrastructure as a service to the people who consume your infrastructure. When you provision a VM, for example, you are providing a virtual machine and everything that goes with it. If it takes days or weeks for that VM to work its way through approvals, or it’s delayed because “we’re waiting on Derek to get back from vacation,” then you’ve already lost. VCF 9.0 provides a cloud native self service model which gives you more control and more security with less effort.