In addition to the usual improvements to VMware Cloud Foundation, Broadcom has been working on a more compact option for small customers. These are precisely the customers who never actually made full use of the VMware offering. They now have the option to choose vSphere Express, which supports up to 128 cores per environment.
vSphere Express is built on vSphere 9 and is available worldwide immediately. The package includes vMotion, High Availability, the Distributed Switch, vCenter Quick Patch, and support for TPM 2.0 and vTPM 2.0.
It is one of the few moves Broadcom has made toward these smaller customers since the VMware acquisition. Following the acquisition, the company significantly scaled back its product offerings. The VMware stack was effectively reduced to VCF and VVF, with subscriptions replacing perpetual licenses. Those bundles came under fire, though Broadcom strongly defended the pricing. According to a recent survey, nine out of ten VMware customers are looking at alternatives. Fear has set in, and many plans to switch have already been carried out.
The clock is also ticking for those who haven’t migrated yet. General support for vSphere 8 ends on October 11, 2027. Anyone who wants to run a new version of vSphere after that will need a subscription. For small environments, VMware’s vSphere Express may still be an option. The only uncertainty is the price. Licenses are reportedly per-core. Distributor TD SYNNEX lists vSphere Express at $9,600 for the one-year package of 128 cores (SKU VCF-VSP-EXP). That works out to $75 per core. That’s still quite steep when compared, for example, to the per-socket cost of HPE VM Essentials ($600).
Private AI expands
Broadcom has also made several announcements regarding VMware Cloud Foundation, the enterprise package for larger customers that consolidates many previously separate components into a comprehensive IT management layer. Organizations interested in this solution are facing rising costs for AI infrastructure, AI-driven cyberattacks, and, on top of that, the rise of agent-based AI workloads. These issues are forcing organizations to rethink where they run those workloads, according to Broadcom. The company states that customers need “a cost-effective, secure, and managed path to enterprise AI.”
This is the familiar story from Broadcom, which has positioned VCF 9 as the leading platform for private cloud, with multi-tenancy and virtual private clouds among its key pillars. This was followed by the move to make VMware AI-native with Private AI Services, including a model runtime, model store, and vector databases.
Get started faster with private AI
The most concrete AI addition is AI Infrastructure Quickstart. Through a vCenter plugin, this tool automates the Day 0 rollout. In other words, it targets the initial deployment of vCenter clusters, the configuration of the Supervisor, and the provisioning of VKS clusters. This should significantly simplify the setup process. Broadcom describes this as delivering a Private AI Cloud that goes “from metal to model” within a few hours. Quickstart will be available in the next release.
Multi-tenant Model Sharing, however, is already available in VCF 9.1.1. This allows multiple internal departments to use a single centrally deployed model, with each tenant having its own data privacy, security boundaries, and an isolated context. Fewer duplicate deployments should lead to a reduced need for extremely expensive GPUs, according to Broadcom. In addition, vSAN will gain native S3-compatible object storage, designed for AI projects, cloud-native applications, and backups. Provisioning is handled via self-service in vSphere Supervisor or VCF Automation.
Confidential computing and a shield for the hypervisor
In the area of security, confidential computing is the most significant new feature, and it is also available immediately. It works on both AMD and Intel platforms and encrypts data-in-use at the hardware level. This specific level of protection is designed to guard against the exploitation of CPU vulnerabilities, data exfiltration via VM cloning, and data leaks between tenants. Cryptographic attestation also confirms that workloads have not been tampered with.
Coming soon are configuration management and compliance features for VCF components such as vCenter, including drift detection and compliance checks against benchmarks like PCI and the VCF Security Baseline. Also coming are policy-based connectivity for VPCs and a native disaster recovery feature for VCF and VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF), with orchestration across thousands of workloads.
As a final addition, Broadcom mentioned HyperArmor. The company introduced this security layer for the ESX hypervisor in mid-October during Explore on Tour in Frankfurt. HyperArmor provides virtual patching without requiring a host reboot, allows only known binaries and scripts to run, and adds MFA to the SSH login. It is a paid Advanced Service, as are two new offerings: VMware Live Recovery, for disaster and cyber recovery using a clean room, and VMware Compliance and Configuration Management, which assesses VMs and containers against CIS and DISA standards or custom benchmarks.