4 Reasons Why VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Is Simply Better On FlashStack

VMware Cloud Foundation™ (VCF) is the next generation of hybrid cloud software from VMware® that allows organizations to modernize their hybrid cloud. VCF brings the architecture found in VMware public clouds on-prem, enabling rapid provisioning of cloud infrastructure, simplified full-stack operations and lifecycle management, and provides application modernization when paired with VMware Tanzu™.

When deploying VCF on FlashStack™, customers benefit from unmatched Simplicity, Optimization, Acceleration, and Protection compared to alternative infrastructures.

These capabilities are enabled by a) the disaggregated architecture, b) the stateless design of the Pure Storage® FlashArray™ and Cisco UCS®, and c) the verbose library of integrations with VMware infrastructure, management software, and automation tools.

VCF on FlashStack supports hybrid cloud deployments with VMware Cloud first party offerings (like VMC in AWS) and VMware Cloud Verified offering (like AVS in Azure), and is fully interoperable with VMware private clouds deployed on other architectures (like VMware vSAN™).

As in the past, this post will focus on high-level capabilities and outcomes. These claims are supported by a set of technical posts that go into greater detail for the tech-centric reader. More technical posts to follow.

Let’s Look at 4 Reasons to Run VMware Cloud Foundation on FlashStack: Simplicity, Optimization, Acceleration, and Protection.

1. Simplicity

Operational simplicity can be one of the most arduous benefits to quantify, as every vendor markets to the simplicity of their products. I am attempting to communicate the simplicity of deploying, operating, and maintaining a VCF environment, so let me try to summarize the simplicity of VCF on FlashStack in three areas.

Simple Life Cycle Management – with an automated day 0 deployment, non-disruptive software updates that don’t reduce data protection or impact application performance (like HCI), and in-place hardware refreshes.

Simple VMware Operations – delivered via integration into native VMware products, management interfaces, and automation and orchestration tools and augmented by Pure1® VM Analytics which monitors cloud services and the underlying physical infrastructure.

Simple Storage Management – this is where Pure truly differentiates itself from legacy and alternative modern storage platforms. There’s nothing to tune and no trade-offs, so your VMware team can deploy clouds faster and manage the entire stack with greater confidence.

For more technical details see: Simplifying VCF Infrastructures with FlashStack (coming soon)

2. Optimization

Infrastructure optimization provides efficiency that reduces costs and is obtained in a myriad of ways when running VCF on FlashStack.

Reduced Infrastructure requirements – FlashStack includes the industry’s best data reduction technology (that’s guaranteed to be 3X to 4X more efficient than alternatives), which makes it optimal for the price sensitive use cases. In addition, FlashStack commonly requires fewer compute nodes, network ports, rack space, power & cooling (compared to HCI), and is available as a consumption-based subscription.

Ditch the Hardware Silos – FlashStack is an agile shared architecture, free of the technical debt associated when rigid hardware silos are deployed and underutilized. FlashStack can provision, deprovision, and reprovision the hardware infrastructure on demand.

Storage Fabric Flexibility – FlashStack supports VCF on Fibre Channel and Ethernet network fabrics, allowing you to leverage your current investments in network infrastructure and capitalize on next-gen networking technologies (like NVMe-oF) as VMware adds support for them in VCF.

For more technical details see: Optimizing VCF Infrastructures with FlashStack (coming soon)

3. Acceleration

FlashStack will accelerate several aspects of a hybrid cloud environment.

Application Acceleration – The FlashArray™ in a FlashStack provides consistent low I/O latency and high bandwidth required for mission-critical applications. High-performance storage enables faster systems of record, reduces the time to insight with analytic applications, and ensures a better user experience with virtual desktops for a mobile workforce.

Accelerate Service Delivery – FlashStack is integrated into VMware’s SDDC Manager, which fully automates the deployment of VCF domains (cloud infrastructure) and management tools to application teams, departments, and organizations in minutes. Virtual Machines are provisioned and running in seconds, and VCF domains can be scaled up or down based on utilization, without disruption in seconds.

Accelerate Workload Modernization – Portworx by Pure Storage helps the modernization of workloads by providing persistent storage and advanced data services that support VMware Tanzu and hybrid K8s deployments spanning on-prem and cloud heterogenous Kubernetes platforms.

For more technical details see: Accelerating VCF Infrastructures with FlashStack (coming soon)

4. Protection

Your organization relies on the availability and resiliency of your cloud infrastructure. Pure Storage provides unmatched availability and data protection capabilities to ensure your infrastructure is in the best position to thwart today’s cybersecurity attacks and regional disasters.

Increased Availability and Resiliency – VCF on FlashStack is built on the proven 99.9999+% uptime of FlashArray. For deployments requiring even higher levels of availability, VCF can be deployed in a vSphere® Metro Storage Cluster with ActiveCluster™

Production Application SnapShots – FlashArray provides VM granular snapshots – immutable, instant snapshot-based recovery points for VMs, virtual disks, and datastores. FlashArray also includes SafeMode snapshots, which protects against ransomware attacks by making snapshots inaccessible outside of contacting Pure Storage support and completing additional authentication.

Backup & Rapid Restore –Rapid Restore reduces RTO by providing restore rates in excess of 250 TBs/hr. SafeMode snapshots also support backup data sets, protecting backup data from the most complex cyber threats. Rapid Restore and SafeMode are supported by all Pure Storage data protection partners including Commvault, Veeam, Veritas, Rubrik, and FlashRecover data backup powered by Cohesity.

For more technical details see: Protecting VCF Infrastructures with FlashStack (coming soon)

In Conclusion…

Pure Storage® is seeing significant adoption of VCF with some of the largest VMware deployments around the globe. So, if you are planning to adopt VCF or just starting to learn about VCF. In that case, I encourage you to reach out to a Pure Storage channel partner to learn more about the Simplicity, Optimization, Acceleration, and Protection available for VMware Cloud Foundation with FlashStack.

–cheers,
v