VMware solution on Google Cloud overview

VMware solution on Google Cloud provides dedicated bare-metal ESXi nodes in your Google Cloud project. You deploy, configure, and manage VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) on bare-metal instances that connect directly to your Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network.

VMware solution uses a Bring Your Own License (BYOL) model. You provide VCF licenses and maintain control over software versions, configurations, and lifecycle updates.

Shared management responsibilities

In VMware solution, responsibilities are shared between you and Google Cloud:

• Customer responsibilities: Procuring VCF licenses, deploying the VMware SDDC stack (vSphere, vSAN, and NSX), applying software updates and patches, and managing workloads.
• Google Cloud responsibilities: Managing physical facilities, bare-metal server hardware, and cloud networking infrastructure up to the hypervisor.

For a detailed breakdown of operational boundaries across compute, storage, networking, and support, see the Shared responsibility model.

Core components and architecture

To plan and manage your VMware solution environment, review the following foundational guides:

• Architecture overview: Explore the compute, storage, and network architecture for VCF on Google Cloud bare-metal infrastructure.
• Bare-metal nodes and machine types: Understand the dedicated bare-metal Compute Engine instances and hardware specifications that host your ESXi hypervisors.
• Placement policies and availability domains: Learn how to distribute nodes across availability domains to ensure high availability and map them to vSAN fault domains.
• About vSphere clusters: Plan vSphere and VCF cluster architectures, sizing, and node minimums.
• VMware Cloud Foundation components and networking: Understand VCF domains, management appliances, dynamic network interfaces (NICs), network endpoint groups (NEGs), and the automation toolkit.

What's next

• Set up your software repository in Configure a VCF software depot.
• Compare provisioning workflows in the Deployment options overview.
• Deploy your nodes and configure appliance networking by using Deploy nodes and configure appliance networking by using the console.
• Deploy your nodes and infrastructure by using Deploy nodes and VCF by using Terraform and toolkit.
• Prepare nodes and deploy VCF by using Prepare nodes and deploy VCF by using the toolkit.
• Learn how to add or remove nodes in Manage node capacity.