VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1.0 Released

VMware has released Cloud Foundation 4.1.0.

Note: the BOM does not have the vRealize Suite 8.2 in this version,

What’s new:

• vVols as Principal Storage in Workload Domains: VMware Cloud Foundation now supports vVols as principal storage, providing a common storage management framework for external storage and automation for pre-defined storage, including volume management and provisioning.
• Remote Clusters: Extends VMware Cloud Foundation capabilities to the ROBO and Edge sites with VMware Cloud Foundation Remote Clusters.  Now customers can enjoy the same consistent cloud operations in their core data center and edge/ ROBO sites.  
• Read-only Access and Local Accounts: Administrators can create VIEWER users that have read-only access to VMware Cloud Foundation. They can also create a local account for use in break-glass scenarios where a remote identity provider is unreachable.
• ESXi Parallel Upgrades: Enables you to update the ESXi software on multiple clusters in the management domain or a workload domain in parallel. Parallel upgrades reduce the overall time required to upgrade your environment.
• NSX-T Data Center Parallel Upgrades: Enables you to upgrade all Edge clusters in parallel, and then all host clusters in parallel. Parallel upgrades reduce the overall time required to upgrade your environment.
• Support for ESXi hosts with external CA-signed certificates: VMware Cloud Foundation supports APIs to perform bring-up of hosts with certificates generated by an external Certificate Authority (CA). 
• vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager in VMware Cloud Foundation mode: VMware Cloud Foundation 4.1 introduces an improved integration with vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager. When vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager in VMware Cloud Foundation mode is enabled, the behavior of vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager is aligned with the VMware Cloud Foundation architecture.
• vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) Support: vCLS is a new capability introduced in the vSphere 7 Update 1 release. vCLS ensures that if vCenter Server becomes unavailable, cluster services remain available to maintain the resources and health of the workloads that run in the clusters.
• Support for Renaming VMware Cloud Foundation Objects: You can rename workload domains, network pools, and compute clusters after you have deployed them. This allows the flexibility of naming these Cloud Foundation objects to align with company policies.
• VMware Skyline Support for VMware Cloud Foundation: VMware Skyline brings proactive intelligence to VMware Cloud Foundation by identifying management and workload domains, and proactively surfacing VMware Cloud Foundation solution findings. 
• Backup Enhancements: SDDC Manager backup and recovery workflows and APIs have been improved to add new capabilities including, backup management, backup scheduling, retention policy, on-demand backup, and automatic retries on failure. The enhancements also include Public APIs for 3rd party ecosystem and certified backup solutions from Dell PowerProtect and Cohesity.
• Lifecycle Management Enhancements: VMware Cloud Foundation allows skipping versions during upgrade to minimize the number of upgrades applied and time consumed in upgrading. Skip-level upgrade is managed using SDDC Manager and the public API.
• Improved pNIC/vDS support:VI Workload domains can have hosts with multiple pNICs and vSphere Distributed Switches (vDS) that can scale up-to the vSphere maximums supported in the vSphere version included in the BOM.
• Support for XLarge form factor for Edge nodes: You can now use SDDC Manager to create an edge cluster with the XLarge form factor for edge nodes in the Management and VI workload domains.
• Localization: SDDC Manager includes localization support for the following languages – German, Japanese, Chinese,  French and Spanish. Customers can navigate the SDDC Manager UI in those languages.
• Inclusive terminology: As part of a company-wide effort to remove instances of non-inclusive language in our products, the VMware Cloud Foundation team has made changes to some of the terms used in the product UI and documentation.
• New License for vSphere with Tanzu: vSphere with Tanzu has its own license key, separate from vSphere 7.0. This is a subscription-based license with a term limit. 
• Start up and shut down order guidance: Start up and shut down order guidance for VMware Cloud Foundation is now available, enabling you to gracefully shut down and start up the SDDC components in a prescriptive order.
• Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) report: The VPAT evaluates compliance with accessibility guidelines as put forward by the US government (under Section 508) and the EU government (under EN 301 549).  See https://www.vmware.com/help/accessibility.html.
• BOM Updates: Updated Bill of Materials with new product versions

See the release notes for here VCF 4.1.

See the release notes for VCF 4.1 on VxRail.