Google Cloud Adds Self-Managed VMware Cloud Foundation on Bare Metal

Google Cloud has announced the general availability of a self-managed VMware solution that operates VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x on dedicated bare metal. This offering provides customers with root access across ESXi, vCenter, and NSX in 22 regions.

The new self-managed option complements the existing Google-managed VMware Engine and aligns with similar offerings from AWS and Oracle, allowing customers to take control of their stack’s operation.

With this self-managed solution, Google now provides two operational models. The VMware Engine service runs VCF 5.2 on ve1 and ve2 node families, offering role-based vCenter privileges and lifecycle management by Google. In contrast, the new self-managed option runs VCF 9.x on z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal instances, featuring 96 physical cores powered by 4th-generation Intel Xeon processors, 1.5 TB of memory, 72 TB of local NVMe storage, and 200 Gbps networking.

Customers or their partners are responsible for upgrades and patching through VCF Operations, utilizing their own portable VCF subscriptions. Group product manager Sunny Dua and director of product management Prashanth Bungale noted that the launch of VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x by Broadcom is a key driver behind this self-managed deployment option.

Abhay Kumar, who oversees hyperscaler relationships in Broadcom’s VCF division, emphasized that license portability allows customers to transfer existing subscriptions and run workloads without changes.

Google provisions the environment initially and then allows customers to manage it. According to the deployment documentation, a VMware solution toolkit, operated from the console or Terraform, provisions the bare-metal ESXi nodes, configures VMkernel interfaces, sets up Cloud DNS records, and deploys the VCF Installer appliance with a pre-validated configuration.

Before deployment, the project must enable VLAN-based networking, and the VPC should support an 8896-byte MTU. Additionally, management, vSAN, vMotion, and two NSX subnets must be established. Once the installer is in place, the environment becomes the customer’s responsibility.

Storage is managed through vSAN on local NVMe, with NetApp Volumes available as an external datastore. The announcement mentions potential cost reductions, citing “up to 40%” lower server total cost of ownership (TCO) from NVMe memory tiering and “up to 39%” lower storage TCO from vSAN ESA. However, these figures were presented without a baseline or methodology, and the only customer referenced, GXO Logistics, described an early assessment rather than production use.

With this release, Google joins Oracle and AWS in providing customer-operated VCF on bare metal, following Oracle Cloud VMware Solution’s introduction of customer-controlled vSphere in 2020.

Source: InfoQ