VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3 Released

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3 has finally been released.

Some of the new and fixed features include the option for SANs in the CSR, previously there was a limitation with the NSX-T CSR API that didn’t include SANs leading to a warning when visiting the NSX-T VIP when you had replaced the certificate.

What’s New

• Flexibility in Application Virtual Networks (AVN):  Application Virtual Networks(AVN)s, which include the NSX Edge Cluster and NSX network segments, are no longer deployed and configured during bring-up. Instead they are implemented as a Day-N operations in SDDC Manager, providing greater flexibility.
  
• FIPS Support: You can enable FIPS mode during bring-up, which will enable it on all the VMware Cloud Foundation components that support FIPS.
  
• Scheduled Automatic Password Rotations: In addition to the on-demand password rotation capability, it is now possible to schedule automatic password rotations for accounts managed through SDDC Manager (excluding ESXi accounts). Automatic password rotation is enabled by default for service accounts.  
  
• SAN in Certificate Signing Requests (CSR) : You can now add a Subject Alternative Name (SAN) when you generate a Certificate Signing Request (CSR) in SDDC Manager.
  
• Improvements for vSphere Lifecycle Manager images:  For workload domains that use vSphere Lifecycle Manager images, this release includes several improvements. These include: prechecks to proactively identify issues that may affect upgrade operations; enabling concurrent upgrades for NSX-T Data Center components; and enabling provisioning and upgrade of Workload Management. 
  
• Add vSphere Clusters in Parallel: You can add up to 10 vSphere clusters to a workload domain in parallel, improving the performance and speed of the workflow.
  
• Add and Remove NSX Edge Nodes in NSX Edge Clusters: For NSX Edge clusters deployed through SDDC Manager or the VMware Cloud Foundation API VMware, you can expand and shrink NSX Edge clusters by adding or removing NSX Edge nodes from the cluster.
  
• Guidance for Day-N operations in NSX Federated VCF environments: You can federate NSX-T Data Center environments across VMware Cloud Foundation instances. You can manage federated NSX-T Data Center environments with a single pane of glass, create gateways and segments that span VMware Cloud Foundation instances, and configure and enforce firewall rules consistently across instances. Guidance is also provided for password rotation, certificate management, backup and restore, and lifecycle management for federated environments.
  
• Backup Enhancements: You can now configure an SDDC Manager backup schedule and retention policy from the SDDC Manager UI.
  
• VMware Validated Solutions: VMware Validated Solutions are a series of technical reference validated implementations designed to help customers build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for their applications and workloads deployed on VMware Cloud Foundation. Each VMware Validated Solution will come with detailed design with design decisions, implementation guidance consisting of manual UI-based step-by-step procedures and, where applicable, automated steps using infrastructure as code. These solutions based on VMware Cloud Foundation will be available on core.vmware.com. The first set of validated solutions, that can be applied on vSAN ReadyNodes, include the following:
  • Identity and Access Management for VMware Cloud Foundation 
  • Developer Ready Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Foundation 
  • Advanced Load Balancing for VMware Cloud Foundation 
  • Private Cloud Automation for VMware Cloud Foundation 
  • Intelligent Operations Management for VMware Cloud Foundation 
  • Intelligent Logging and Analytics for VMware Cloud Foundation 
    
• Documentation Enhancements: The content from VMware Validated Design documentation has now been unified with core VMware Cloud Foundation documentation or has been integrated into a VMware Validated Solution. Additional documentation enhancements include:
  • Design Documents for VMware Cloud Foundation foundational components with design decisions 
  • Design for the Management Domain     
  • Design for the Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain     
  • Design for vRealize Suite Lifecyle and Access Management     
  • Getting Started with VMware Cloud Foundation publication   
  • Procedure enhancements through unification of content between VMware Validated Design and VMware Cloud Foundation publications
    
• Capacity Planner tool: Administrators can use the VCF Capacity Planner online tool to model and generate a Software Defined Data Center build of materials. This interactive tool generates detailed guidance of hyper-converged server, storage, network, and cloud software SKUs required to successfully deploy an on-premises cloud.
  
• Private APIs: Access to private APIs that use basic authentication is deprecated in this release. You must switch to using public APIs.
  
• BOM updates: Updated Bill of Materials with new product versions.
  

Cloud Foundation Bill of Materials (BOM)