VMware vSphere — Enterprise Virtualization
Hands-on Broadcom VMware Cloud Foundation — a nested four-host vSphere cluster with vCenter, for testing VCF and its surrounding ecosystem.
What a customer gets out of it
- Give customers hands-on time with Broadcom VMware Cloud Foundation rather than a slide deck
- Exercise the vSphere platform end to end: cluster build, vCenter, HA/DRS, vMotion and lifecycle
- Explore the advanced stack that sits on top — vSAN storage, Tanzu Kubernetes, NSX networking and Aria operations
- Support side-by-side evaluation against the alternatives the lab also runs (OpenShift, Nutanix, HPE VME)
Why it matters
vSphere is the platform most enterprise datacenters are actually built on, so nearly every infrastructure conversation starts from it — either extending it or deciding whether to leave. Broadcom's move to subscription licensing and VCF-based packaging has put that decision in front of customers who had not revisited it in a decade, and most are evaluating on assumptions rather than evidence. A bookable VCF environment turns that into something testable: a customer can run their own workloads, try vSAN or Tanzu against a real cluster, and reach a defensible answer. Because the lab also runs OpenShift, Nutanix and HPE VME on identical hardware, the same booking supports an honest comparison instead of a vendor pitch.
Lab overview
No walkthrough is recorded for this demo yet, so this is a 21 sec tour of the lab and how to use it.
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Overview
This environment builds a complete nested VMware vSphere cluster — four ESXi hosts and a vCenter Server appliance — in one of the lab's demo landing zones. It exists so customers, SMEs and engineers can get hands-on with Broadcom VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and the ecosystem around it, on real hardware, without touching a production estate.
Bookable as a guided demo, a hands-on POC, or a classroom for a group.
Why VCF, and why now
vSphere is the platform the majority of enterprise virtualization estates are built on. It is the incumbent — the thing already running, and therefore the baseline any alternative is measured against.
Since Broadcom's acquisition of VMware, packaging has consolidated around VMware Cloud Foundation and moved to subscription licensing. That has prompted a large number of organisations to re-examine a platform decision they had not revisited in years. Most of that re-examination is happening on assumption and hearsay. This lab exists so it can happen on evidence instead.
The VCF stack you can explore
- vSphere / ESXi — the hypervisor itself: HA, DRS, vMotion, cluster lifecycle and host management through vCenter.
- vSAN — hyperconverged storage pooled from local disks, as an alternative to an external array. Available here as a build option alongside the standard NFS datastore.
- Tanzu — Kubernetes running natively on vSphere, so container and VM workloads are managed from the same control plane. The usual answer to "we need Kubernetes but our operations team knows vCenter".
- NSX — network virtualization and micro-segmentation, moving policy off the physical fabric.
- VMware Aria — the automation and operations layer, formerly branded vRealize. Aria Operations is what most customers still call vROps: capacity, performance and cost visibility across the estate.
A note on VDI
VDI on vSphere is still a common ask, and it still runs here — but Horizon is no longer a Broadcom product. End-User Computing was divested in 2024 and now trades as Omnissa. It remains part of the ecosystem and a valid thing to demonstrate; it is simply not part of VCF, and describing it as such in front of a customer will cost credibility.
What you'll learn
- Building and operating a vSphere cluster from bare metal upward
- Where vSAN fits, and when an external array is still the right answer
- Running Kubernetes on vSphere with Tanzu, and how that compares to a dedicated platform like OpenShift
- What Aria Operations actually tells you about capacity and cost
- How VCF compares against Nutanix and HPE VM Essentials — all three run on identical lab hardware, so the comparison is like-for-like