VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 is designed for teams that are being asked to do more with the same resources. It focuses on three core outcomes: better efficiency, faster application delivery, and stronger cyber resilience, all without adding operational complexity.

Key ways it helps:

• Improve infrastructure efficiency and lower TCO
  
  • Enhanced NVMe memory tiering creates a unified memory model where hot data stays in DRAM and colder pages move to NVMe. This increases effective memory capacity without changing application behavior and supports higher consolidation ratios.
  • These enhancements can help drive up to 40% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by improving utilization and reducing the need for additional hardware.
  • vSAN global deduplication and enhanced compression continuously reduce physical storage consumption across clusters by eliminating redundant data and improving compression efficiency, including in encrypted environments.
• Simplify operations at scale
  
  • vSphere Elastic Provisioning streamlines how hosts are brought online with parallel imaging, automated discovery, and consistent configuration, cutting provisioning time and making it easier to scale or repurpose capacity.
  • Increased upgrade scale with parallel lifecycle operations helps you update large environments faster and more predictably.
  • Topology-aware scheduling improves performance on modern high core count processors.
  • Real-time operational observability gives better visibility across infrastructure and workloads.
• Support modern and AI workloads without re-architecting
  
  • VCF 9.1 supports environments that span VMs, containers, and AI workloads, so you can run traditional and modern applications on a consistent platform.
  • With VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), you can scale up to 500 Kubernetes clusters per Supervisor, which is especially useful for multi-tenant platforms or strict workload isolation.

In short, VCF 9.1 helps you get more value from the infrastructure you already own, while keeping operations manageable as your environment grows.

VCF 9.1 is built to help teams move from “managing infrastructure” to “delivering applications” with more speed and predictability. It focuses on reducing friction in deployment, scaling, and change management.

Key capabilities that support faster, more consistent delivery include:

• Higher-scale Kubernetes for modern apps
  
  • VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) now scales to up to 500 Kubernetes clusters per Supervisor, giving platform teams room to support hundreds of development teams or tenants from a single management backbone.
  • Faster provisioning and improved operational efficiency make it easier to deploy and scale modern applications while maintaining isolation and consistency.
• Faster, more efficient workload mobility
  
  • vMotion encryption offload shifts encryption processing to hardware, reducing CPU overhead during secure migrations.
  • This can deliver approximately 70% CPU savings during migrations, which helps applications maintain performance and lets hosts return to steady state more quickly.
• Reusable blueprints for entire application stacks
  
  • Live application stack blueprints allow you to capture a running application, including compute, networking, and storage configuration, and turn it into a reusable template.
  • New environments can then be deployed in minutes instead of hours, with no manual configuration and consistent setups across dev, test, and production.
• Built-in storage services for developers
  
  • Native object storage provides S3-compatible storage directly on the platform, so developers can consume scalable storage services without relying on external systems.
• Integrated ecosystem for modern tooling
  
  • Integration with Tanzu Marketplace gives access to validated services and tooling, helping teams standardize on trusted components.

Together, these capabilities help you reimagine your private cloud as an application delivery platform—speeding up deployments, improving consistency, and supporting both traditional and AI-driven workloads.

VCF 9.1 is designed to build security, compliance, and recovery into the platform itself, so you can move from reactive fixes to a more proactive and resilient operating model.

Key capabilities include:

• Integrated disaster and ransomware recovery
  
  • vSAN for Recovery uses native snapshot capabilities and integrated replication workflows to protect workloads and streamline both disaster recovery and ransomware recovery.
  • Deep snapshot chains and efficient replication help you recover quickly while keeping operations manageable across environments.
• Continuous compliance enforcement
  
  • Advanced Cyber Compliance (ACC) provides automated assessment and remediation against baselines such as VCF security guidelines and PCI DSS benchmarks.
  • Built-in drift detection and centralized visibility help maintain a consistent security posture and reduce audit preparation time.
• Secure workload mobility with less overhead
  
  • Encrypted vMotion with hardware acceleration improves the security of workload migrations while reducing the performance penalty typically associated with encryption.
• Reduced downtime for security updates
  
  • Live patching enhancements allow critical security updates to be applied without taking workloads offline, helping you maintain compliance and security posture with less operational disruption.
• Security ecosystem integrations
  
  • Integration with tools like CrowdStrike EDR embeds endpoint validation into cyber recovery workflows.
  • Recovered workloads can be scanned in isolated clean room environments before returning to production, helping reduce reinfection risk and speeding safe recovery.

With these capabilities, VCF 9.1 helps you rethink your private cloud as a secure, compliant, and resilient platform—one where protection, detection, and recovery are part of day-to-day operations rather than separate projects.