About SDDC Enterprise

SDDC Enterprise is a single tenant Private Cloud built on VMware Cloud Foundation that enables full Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) capabilities including VMware virtualized compute, storage, networking, and cloud management.

SDDC Enterprise is built on VMware Validated Designs, which are based on best practices, making deployments more predictable and lower risk. Continuous updates allow for the most up-to-date VMware capabilities through lifecycle management of VMware components, thereby helping to improve users’ security posture.

SDDC Enterprise is a modular solution that supports a variety of services and technologies that can easily be integrated to the solution adding to its value proposition. Below are the currently available add-ons :

• vRealize Operations: vROPs provides full-stack visibility, proactive planning, continuous performance optimization, efficient capacity, and cost management.
• vRealize Log Insight: Intelligent log management for infrastructure and applications.
• vRealize Network Insight: Intelligent operations for software defined networking and security.
• VM Management: OS Administration, Patching, Monitoring and Anti-virus for the workload running on SDDC Enterprise.
• Tanzu (Kubernetes & Containers): Application platform that enables enterprises to modernize both their applications and the infrastructure they run on.
• RackConnect Global: A software-defined multi-cloud interconnection platform that links Rackspace customers with other Rackspace data centers, third party data centers, and third-party clouds via direct, private, low latency virtual connection.
• Rackspace Data Protection: A Backup solution for workload running on SDDC Enterprise.
• Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity: Various managed and unmanaged solutions to cater for your disaster recovery needs.

SDDC Enterprise Core Platform

• Dedicated, single tenant compute, network, and storage (minimum 4 hypervisors, dedicated switching + firewall).
• Management Storage: vSAN to allow for HA management cluster.
• Compute Storage: vSAN, sSAN, dSAN, File, Object.
• SDDC Core: VMware vSphere (ESXi + vCenter Server), NSX-T software defined networking deployed and managed by VMware Cloud Foundation.

Below is a high-level diagram of SDDC Enterprise

SDDC Enterprise Software BOM

• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware vSphere Virtualization
• VMware vCenter®
• VMware vSAN™
• VMware NSX®

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

VMware Cloud Foundation is a unified SDDC platform that brings together VMware vSphere, vSAN, NSX, and vRealize components into a natively integrated stack to automate the deployment and management of the full VMware Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) stack. VCF is fully integrated with VxRail such that both are managed as one, complete, automated, turnkey hybrid cloud experience greatly reducing risk and increasing IT operational efficiency.

VMware vSphere Virtualization

VMware vSphere provides the base virtualization and hypervisor layer for the platform.

VMware vCenter Server

VMware vCenter Server provides centralized visibility, proactive management, and extensibility for VMware vSphere from a single console.

VMware vSAN storage

VMware vSAN is an enterprise-grade, hyper-converged, software-defined storage solution optimized for VMware virtual machines (VMs) that is natively embedded in the vSphere hypervisor that is used to provide storage.

VMware NSX-T

Agile software defined networking with security, automation, and operational simplicity.

SDDC Enterprise Deployment Types

SDDC Enterprise supports both Standard and Consolidated VCF deployment models.

• Consolidated Architecture: The Cloud Foundation management workload domain runs both the management workloads and tenant workloads.
  • Minimum configuration of 4 hypervisor nodes for the combined management domain/customer workload domain.
  • Consolidated architecture in vCF on VxRail carries some caveats:
    • Cannot later be converted to a standard architecture.
    • Is limited to 64 total nodes.

• Standard Architecture: Includes a management domain consisting of workloads supporting the virtual infrastructure, cloud operations, cloud automation, business continuity, and security and compliance components for the SDDC. Using SDDC Manager, one or more separate workload domains (including vCenter, NSX-T manager cluster and NSX-T edge cluster) are allocated to customer workloads.
  • Minimum configuration of 4 hypervisor nodes for the management domain and 2 nodes for the customer workload domain.