index
VCF: Where to Focus
a mental model for VMware Cloud Foundation
Disclaimer
This site contains my personal notes and understanding of VMware Cloud Foundation. It reflects my own learning journey and mental models. Although I conducted an extensive research to keep things consistent and factually accurate, due to the fast-evolving nature of VCF, the content on this site may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect.
THIS IS NOT OFFICIAL DOCUMENTATION.
For authoritative and up-to-date information, please refer to the official VMware Cloud Foundation Documentation.
This site is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Broadcom, Inc.
VMware, VMware Cloud Foundation, and related marks are trademarks of Broadcom, Inc., or its subsidiaries.
^ That part taken care of, let’s get this rolling, shall we?
This Is not a Typical Website; Explore the UI
Although its features degrade gracefully, this website is best experienced on a desktop browser (instead of a mobile browser), where you can navigate the graph view, and pin articles.
It is specifically designed to give a more IDE-like experience.
Getting Started
This knowledge base is organized around mental models, not product marketing or step-by-step tutorials.
If you are new, I recommend starting with one of the paths below, depending on what you are trying to understand.
0. The Big Picture
If you are a visual learner, The Big Picture should possibly be the first thing to look at before diving any deeper: It nicely outlines how various VCF components and concepts link together.
1. Explore the Tags
Also, the concept of tenancy is a fundamental part of VCF, and it touches everything: I have tagged anything that directly or indirectly ties to tenancy with the #tenancy tag. Just tap on the #tenancy tag, and you will see list of relevant pages filtered on the navigation section.
Here is a list of commonly-used tags that you might find helpful:
- #tenancy: WHO can consume,
- #governance: WHAT rules apply,
- #kubernetes: WHERE Pods/Clusters run,
- #architecture: HOW things fit together,
- #operations: HOW things are maintained,
- #lifecycle: WHEN things happen,
- #security: HOW things are protected.
2. High-Level Mental Model
If you want to understand what VCF is and how its major pieces fit together:
This path focuses on structure, roles, and boundaries rather than implementation details.
3. Platform and Runtimes
If you are interested in what actually runs and where workloads live:
→ vSphere
→ vSphere Supervisor
→ VKS
This path explains the execution model, including VMs, Pods, Supervisor Namespaces, and Guest Clusters.
4. Control Planes and Operations
If you are trying to understand who controls what and how lifecycle and operations are handled:
This path is useful for architects, platform engineers, and operators.
5. Governance, Compliance, and Constraints
If your focus is on guardrails rather than features:
This path covers cross-cutting concepts that influence design and operations.
Keep Exploring
This content of this site is intentionally organized semantically, rather than taxonomically. So you will likely find the “graph view” (on the right) more useful than the folder navigation (on the left).
Hope you enjoy the ride,
License
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the content on this website is distributed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
About Images
Images on this site are used for informational and illustrative purposes. Some originate from publicly available sources and may not carry explicit attribution. If you are a rights holder and require attribution, modification, or removal, please contact me and the request will be addressed promptly.
