This is a comprehensive guide to planning the physical infrastructure and Bill of Materials (BOM) for a compliant, production-ready VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x deployment.
Why Hardware Planning Matters More in VCF
Unlike traditional vSphere, VCF imposes strict, validated hardware requirements through SDDC Manager. An inaccurate Bill of Materials will cause the VCF Installer to fail, making upfront, precise hardware validation critical before procurement.
The Management Domain Floor
Every VCF deployment requires a four-host minimum management domain when using vSAN, essential for running the management control plane (vCenter, NSX, SDDC Manager, VCF Operations) with N+1 redundancy.
Workload Domain Scale Minimums
Whether using vSAN or external storage (Fibre Channel, NFS), a minimum of three ESXi hosts is required per cluster to support automated lifecycle management and robust storage policy availability.
Processor (CPU) Compatibility
VCF 9.x (ESXi 9) demands 64-bit x86 architecture.
- Supported: Intel Ice Lake, Sapphire Rapids, Emerald Rapids and newer. AMD EPYC Milan, Genoa, Bergamo and later.
- Blocked: Intel Broadwell-EP and all Skylake variants are strictly blocked by the installer.
- Deprecation Warnings: Cascade Lake and AMD Rome still boot but show deprecation warnings. Plan your hardware refresh around Ice Lake or newer for a clean runway.
Memory Design Baselines
- Management Domain: Minimum 512 GB RAM per host is recommended to handle the intensive management appliance footprint.
- Workload Domain: 256 GB RAM per host serves as a standard baseline for typical enterprise workloads.
Storage Architecture: vSAN ESA vs. OSA
vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA): Recommended for greenfield deployments. ESA uses a high-performance, single-tier NVMe storage pool. It requires specific vSAN ESA ReadyNodes certified on the Broadcom HCL, with a minimum of two NVMe devices per host, though four or more is recommended for production workloads. Legacy SATA and SAS SSDs are not supported under ESA.
vSAN Original Storage Architecture (OSA): Retains full support for legacy SAS and SATA hardware using the traditional flash cache and capacity disk group model. If your current hardware is SAS or SATA SSD, you will deploy on OSA and can migrate to ESA as part of your next hardware refresh cycle.
You cannot build a custom storage node for vSAN ESA in a production VCF 9.x environment. Your hardware vendor must provide certified servers listed explicitly under the vSAN ESA ReadyNode Broadcom Compatibility Guide. NVMe drives must meet strict endurance requirements, and mixing multi-vendor NVMe SKUs within a ReadyNode BOM is not supported by most OEMs.
Boot Media
ESXi 9 requires a minimum of 32 GB of local system disk space. High-endurance, dedicated enterprise boot devices are required, such as M.2 NVMe, BOSS cards, or HPE NS204i modules, isolated from the vSAN storage pool. Standalone SD cards and USB drives are deprecated and unsupported for new VCF 9.x deployments due to high endurance failure rates and changes in the ESXi storage architecture.
Network Fabric Infrastructure
- Throughput: 25 GbE is recommended for ESA deployments, with 10 GbE as the minimum supported speed.
- Redundancy: Minimum two physical NICs per host.
- Configuration: Jumbo frames (MTU 9000 or higher) must be configured across all vSAN and Geneve overlay networks to avoid fragmentation.
Because vSAN ESA uses a single-tier pool over pure NVMe, network throughput becomes the primary bottleneck. Before placing your final hardware purchase order, use the official VMware vSAN Sizer, which is fully updated for vSAN ESA and automatically factors in the heavy resource overhead required by the VCF 9.x Management Domain.
The HCL Is Not Optional
VCF rigorously validates components against the Broadcom Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) during installation. If your server, storage controller, NIC, or drive is not on the HCL, the VCF Installer will flag it. In a nested lab you can work around this with mock VIBs, but in production there is no shortcut. Ensure all components are certified, particularly when selecting vSAN ReadyNodes.
The Bottom Line
VCF hardware planning comes down to validated, certified components across every layer. Four hosts for the management domain, three for workload domains. Intel Ice Lake or AMD Milan and newer on the HCL. 512 GB RAM minimum for management hosts. Pure NVMe vSAN ESA ReadyNodes for new builds. Enterprise M.2 or hardware-mirrored boot devices. Dual 25 GbE with a 9000 MTU fabric. Validate everything against the HCL and run the vSAN Sizer before you order.