Yes, as I mentioned in our previous article about the new virtual hardware v22, the new VMware platform has been released. In this post we’ll have a look inside, what it brings from the technical perspective, and if it is time for an upgrade.
Announced at VMware Explore 2024 and hitting general availability on June 17, 2025, VCF 9.0 is all about streamlining private cloud operations, boosting performance, and tightening security. It’s a unified platform that brings compute, storage, and networking together, making it easier to deploy and manage modern workloads—whether you’re running traditional VMs, containers, or AI-driven apps. The focus here is on efficiency, scalability, and cost control, and the updates to vSphere, vCenter, ESXi, and vSAN.
ESXi 9.0 and vCenter Server 9.0, all along with vSAN, vCloud operations, and NSX are part of the whole VCF package. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) both can be deployed from the unified single appliance called VCF-SDDC Manager Appliance.
From the installer, you’ll deploy your ESXi, vCenter and everything else. As for the licensing, you’ll need to deploy VCF Operations from where you can properly license your vCenter, ESXi etc.
VCF 9 replaces multiple disjointed tools with just two user-focused portals:
- VCF Operations – for platform administrators.
- VCF Automation – for consumers and developers.
The VCF Installer looks like this:
What is New in vSphere 9.0 and ESXi 9.0?
NVME Tiering – ESXi 9.0 has now supported version of the NVMe tiering function that has been introduced in ESXi 8.0 U3 (we have reported on this feature in our blog post on StarWind blog here). VCF 9.0 lets you extend the memory pool with NVMe, where treating fast NVMe devices can be used as a second, lower-cost tier. Compute-intensive workloads keep their working sets close to the CPU while cold pages move to NVMe, freeing DRAM for what truly needs it.
Your ESXi will end up with showing more RAM than they actually have increasing the possibilities to run more workloads. You can more VMs or containers per host without actually buying more RAM sticks. Broadcom claims up to a 40% improvement in server consolidation, meaning you can run more workloads on fewer servers.
The Live Patching capability, first introduced in vSphere 8U3, has been expanded. You can now apply critical security patches to ESXi hosts.
VSAN Global Deduplication – This feature is present, but must request access to it, as it has to be be validated by VMware so they can ensure that that your production environment can actually support it. The first version of this feature does not support stretched clusters and this Is the main reason why you must request the access to it. VMware folks need to check whether you won’t run into problems.
It is only available on vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA), and will deduplicate data after it has been persisted to disk and cools down. (Not inline).
Screenshot from VMware
Global deduplication in vSAN OSA was limited to a disk group only. With vSAN ESA and global deduplication, the identical blocks use the whole cluster as the deduplication domain so it searches for identical blocks within the whole vSAN cluster.
This new vSAN 9.0 release Broadcom claims up to 25% better storage cluster performance, reducing performance-related tickets and improving SLAs. The vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) now supports disabling data-at-rest encryption if needed, alongside shallow and deep rekey options for flexibility.
Enhanced Data Path – Thanks to new kernel optimizations and optional DPU offload, you can get up to 3x faster data speeds. Also, it is supposed to lower latency and reduce CPU overhead. The new enhanced data path is a new feature that is meant to help boost performance for modern AI/ML workloads. Apparently, one of the other reasons for it is that packets stay on-host longer, traversing fewer switch hops, which means inference jobs finish faster and API response times stay predictable.
vSphere Lifecycle Management (vLCM) Enhancements – Phasing out the baselines-based updates in the v9, but brings composite cluster images, allowing you to manage mixed vendor clusters with multiple server models and hardware types in a single cluster. Apparently, you can have up to four additional image configurations that can be defined per cluster, each config with its own unique vendor add-ons, firmware, and hardware support managers (HSMs), while maintaining a consistent ESX base version.
vCenter 9.0 – vCenter now supports Open API 3.0 and a unified SDK, making it easier to script and automate tasks across vSphere Foundation components. This is a lifesaver for teams looking to streamline provisioning and reduce manual work. The APIs are consistent, so your scripts won’t break with upgrades, and they pave the way for seamless expansion to VCF.
Unified Storage Dashboard in VCF 9.0 – There is a new dashboard concerning storage inventory, storage performance, utilization and cost, with capacity planning and storage utilization.
The unified storage dashboard is a standout, offering real-time visibility into vSAN, SAN, and NAS environments. No more juggling multiple monitoring tools—everything’s in one place, simplifying storage management. You can monitor your storage performance, health with prediction grows.
Example from VMware below.
Final Words
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 is a massive leap forward, with vSphere, vCenter, ESXi, and vSAN delivering smarter operations, better performance, and ironclad security. Whether you’re consolidating servers, automating workflows, or prepping for AI workloads, this release has you covered. The decoupled Supervisor updates, unified storage dashboards, live patching, and vSAN’s performance boosts make it a no-brainer for modernizing your private cloud. If you’re still on vSphere 7.x or vSAN 7.x, note that support’s extended to October 2, 2025, giving you time to plan your upgrade.
With VCF 9.0 you no longer manage your individual components of your virtual infrastructure like you have done it before (vCenter/ESXi), but you rather use the VCF 9.0 Dashboards for VCF Operations and VCF Automations.
As AI and ML workloads are on the rise, you more and more use containers for those workloads. And as you know, even if containers are ephemeral, you still need storage as an underlying asset where you run your VMs and containers side-by-side. The storage management in VCF has brought it to a next level. Time will tell if customers are willing to pay for it.
Source: VMware
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