VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 Update

May 13, 2026
Graeme Lewis

VMware by Broadcom have just announced the latest update for VMware Cloud Foundation Version 9.1. This release has loads of new features and enhancements. Here’s a rundown of them:

 

Infrastructure Efficiency & Scale

  • Enhanced NVMe Memory Tiering: Extends server memory capacity by moving colder memory pages to NVMe storage while keeping active data in DRAM. Improves VM density and lowers hardware costs.
  • Native Software Mirroring for Memory Tiering: Adds resilience and redundancy for NVMe memory tiering to protect workloads if storage devices fail.
  • vSAN Global Deduplication: Removes duplicate storage blocks across the entire cluster to reduce storage consumption
  • Enhanced vSAN Compression: Improves storage efficiency using updated compression algorithms while maintaining performance
  • vSphere Elastic Provisioning: Automates host onboarding with parallel imaging, discovery, and configuration to speed up deployments
  • Parallel Lifecycle Operations: Enables upgrades and lifecycle tasks across multiple clusters simultaneously to reduce maintenance windows.
  • 4x Upgrade Scale Increase: Supports upgrades of up to 256 clusters at the same time for large enterprise environments.Support for 5,000 ESXi Hosts. Increases the maximum supported environment size for very large deployments.
  • Topology-Aware Scheduling: Optimises workload placement on high-core-count CPUs for better performance and resource efficiency.
  • Real-Time Operational Observability: Provides high-frequency telemetry and analytics for faster troubleshooting and monitoring.
  • Enterprise Ubuntu Image Support: Adds officially supported Ubuntu image management for enterprise workloads.

 

Kubernetes & Modern Applications

  • VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS) Scale Enhancements: Supports up to 500 Kubernetes clusters per Supervisor instance.
  • Faster Kubernetes Provisioning: Speeds up deployment and scaling of Kubernetes clusters and container workloads.
  • Simplified Containers-as-a-Service: Makes Kubernetes consumption easier through self-service automation.
  • Tanzu Marketplace Integration: Provides direct access to validated Kubernetes applications and tooling.
  • Native Object Storage: Introduces built-in S3-compatible object storage for cloud-native applications.
  • Live Application Stack Blueprints: Captures running multi-tier applications and converts them into reusable deployment templates.
  • App Stack Formation: Packages VMs, networking, storage, dependencies, and boot order into portable deployment blueprints.

 

AI & GPU Enhancements

  • Production AI Platform Improvements: Enhances VCF as a unified platform for traditional apps, Kubernetes, and AI workloads.
  • AMD Instinct GPU Support: Adds support for AMD MI350 GPUs using Enhanced DirectPath I/O.
  • GPU Observability: Provides monitoring and visibility into GPU and AI model performance.
  • Mixed Compute Infrastructure Support: Supports AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware in the same AI infrastructure environment.

 

Security & Cyber Resilience

  • Zero Trust Security Enhancements: Expands identity verification, certificate management, and platform hardening.
  • CrowdStrike EDR Integration: Integrates endpoint detection and ransomware recovery validation into recovery workflows.
  • Unified Threat Prevention: Extends security protection across both VMs and Kubernetes workloads.
  • Enhanced Distributed Firewall: Improves micro-segmentation and east-west traffic security controls.
  • IDPS Turbo Mode: Accelerates intrusion detection and prevention for high-performance workloads such as AI.
  • Integrated Audit & Log Management: Centralises logging and auditing for compliance and forensic analysis.
  • Cross-Platform Replication & Recovery: Improves workload resilience and disaster recovery across environments.

 

Networking & Platform Operations

  • VCF Management Services Runtime: Replaces separate appliances with centralised containerised management services.
  • Unified Lifecycle & Identity Management: Centralises lifecycle management, repositories, identity services, and operations.
  • EVPN Interoperability: Adds networking integration support for vendors including Arista, Cisco, and SONiC.
  • VPC Connectivity Policies: Adds more flexible network segmentation and VPC connectivity controls.
  • vMotion Encryption Offload: Offloads encrypted vMotion processing to hardware, reducing CPU overhead during VM migrations.

 

Overall, this update looks pretty good to help improve infrastructure efficiency and help to reduce total cost of ownership, with some good improvements to Kubernetes, AI and increased security.

Official link: VMware Cloud Foundation Blog