PRODUCT LINE COMPARISON

VMware vSphere
Product Line Comparison
The enterprise workload engine

VMware vSphere is available in three different editions: VMware vSphere® Standard, VMware vSphere®
Enterprise Plus, and VMware vSphere® Foundation. Use this comparison chart to choose the right
edition for your organization’s needs.

Key Attributes vSphere vSphere vSphere

Standard Enterprise Plus Foundation

Licensing Model Subscription Subscription Subscription

License Metric Per Core Per Core Per Core

VMware vCenter® Edition Includes vCenter Includes vCenter Includes vCenter

Standard Standard Standard

VMware Cloud Foundation® Operations No No Yes

VMware vSphere® Kubernetes Service (VKS) No No Yes

VMware vSAN™ Enterprise (.25 TiB per core) Yes, requires 8.0U2B
No No
or newer

Admin Services and Intelligent Operations vSphere vSphere vSphere

Management Standard Enterprise Foundation
Plus

vCenter Lifecycle Management Service

Simplifies the lifecycle management of vCenter
instances with a single click. Reduces maintenance
window making it easier to schedule updates sooner,
allowing more rapid access to new features.

VCF Operations: Continuous Performance

Optimization with VCF Operations, assure workload
performance at minimal costs. Based on
operational and business intent, real-time
predictive analytics and AI drive actions to
automatically balance workloads and proactively
avoid contention.

1
Admin Services and Intelligent Operations vSphere vSphere vSphere
Management Standard Enterprise Plus Foundation

VCF Operations: Efficient Cost and Capacity

Management
Reduce cost and improve efficiency with real-time,
predictive capacity and cost analytics, delivering optimal
consolidation and proactive planning. Using a real time,
forward-looking capacity analytics engine, predictive
analytics and AI automatically balance workloads to
improve performance based on operational and business
goals.

VCF Operations: Intelligent Remediation

Use VCF Operations to predict, prevent and troubleshoot
faster with actionable insights correlating metrics, events,
logs and configuration data to deliver AI-based anomaly
detection across private clouds. Extend monitoring
visibility to multiple public clouds as well as physical
compute and storage.

VCF Operations: Integrated Compliance

Reduce risk and enforce IT regulatory standards with VCF
Operations integrated compliance and automated drift
remediation. Ensure your environment’s adherence to
common requirements with six out-of-the-box compliance
templates— such as for PCI or HIPAA—or create your own
custom templates.

VCF Operations for Logs

Manage log data at scale with centralized infrastructure log
management, deep operational visibility, and intelligent
analytics for troubleshooting and auditing across
environments. Capabilities include interactive logs analysis,
Kubernetes log collection, alerts, active directory
integration, role-based access control, scheduled
dashboard reports, and event forwarding.

VCF Operations Diagnostics (formerly Skyline)

Avoid issues before they occur. Pinpoint potential
problems across your VMware environment and use VCF
Operations remediation guidance to fix the issues that
can cause disruptive and costly IT downtime.

Kubernetes Services for Running VMs and Containers vSphere vSphere vSphere
Standard Enterprise Plus Foundation

vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)

The vSphere Kubernetes Service allows developers to
manage consistent, compliant and conformant Kubernetes
clusters via ClusterClass API.

2
 vSphere vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Kubernetes Services for Running VMs and Containers
Standard Plus Foundation

VKS Standard Packages

Streamlines the deployment and management of local
and in-cluster platform services—like logging,
monitoring, networking and storage services—to easily
configure and maintain a production-ready Kubernetes
environment.

Storage Service
The Storage Service allows developers to manage
persistent disks for use with containers, Kubernetes and
virtual machines. Deploy existing block and file storage
infrastructure for containerized workloads.

Network Services
The Network Service allows developers to manage
Virtual Routers and Load Balancers. Leverage existing
networking infrastructure using vSphere Distributed
Switch’s (VDS) centralized interface to configure,
monitor and administer switching access for VMs and
Kubernetes workloads.

Container Registry Service

The Registry Service allows developers to store,
manage and secure Docker and OCI container images
through Harbor as a Supervisor Service.

VM Registry Service
The Registry Service allows developers to store, manage
and secure Docker and OCI container images through
Harbor as a Supervisor Service.

Network Load Balancing

Network load balancing for Supervisor workloads AVI Essentials and
including: VM Service, vSphere Pods, and VKS clusters HA Proxy included
(and containers).

VM Service
The VM service allows developers to create virtual machines
independently from Kubernetes without requiring access to
vSphere Client.

Workload Availability Zones

Enhance Kubernetes workload HA with availability zones.
Provides resilience that spans across multiple clusters and
potentially larger geographical areas.

Customizable Base OS Images

Customize base OS images for fast, consistent
deployments. For example, customize images to include
logging or monitoring tools, change OS parameters,
adjust user configuration files, add firewall rules, etc.

3
 vSphere
vSphere vSphere
Kubernetes Services for Running VMs and Containers Enterprise
Standard Foundation
Plus

Independent vSphere Kubernetes

Service (VKS)
Easily upgrade to the latest Kubernetes
releases independent of vSphere releases.

Local Consumption Interface (LCI)

Simplified self-service access to infrastructure using LCI in
the vSphere Supervisor.

Supervisor support on vSAN stretched clusters

Deploy Supervisor on vSAN stretched cluster spanning two
physical locations or sites.

Autoscaling for Kubernetes Clusters

Easily scale down or scale up your Kubernetes
clusters/nodes with autoscaling.

vSphere
vSphere Standard vSphere
Simplified Operations Enterprise
Foundation
Plus

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

Manage infrastructure images to patch, update or upgrade
VMware ESX clusters using a desired state model.

vCenter Server Profiles

Desired state config management capabilities for vCenter
Server. It helps the user to define/validate/apply
configuration for multiple vCenter Servers.

vCenter Server Update Planner

Manage the compatibility and interoperability for vCenter
Server for upgrade scenarios. We will allow users to
generate the interoperability and pre-checks report,
which will help them plan for upgrades.

Content Library
Added administrative control and versioning support.
Provides simple and effective centralized management for
virtual machine templates, virtual appliances, ISO images
and scripts.

vSphere Configuration Profiles

Set host configuration at the cluster level, verify that hosts
are compliant, and remediate hosts that are not compliant.

Distributed Switch™
Centralizes provisioning, administration, and
monitoring by using cluster-level network
aggregation.

4
 vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Simplified Operations
Plus Foundation

Host Profiles and Auto Deploy™

Captures host-level configuration settings and saves
them as a template to configure other vSphere hosts.
Monitors hosts for configuration changes and
automatically alerts vSphere administrators if a host
falls out of compliance.

Virtual Volumes™
Virtualizes external storage (SAN and NAS) and
provides VM-aware, policy-based storage
management through
vCenter.

Green Metrics
Get power consumed by workloads, infrastructure services
and idling time, at the host or VM level.
Discover opportunities to:
1) optimize carbon footprint of power-hungry workloads and
2) use idle time to consolidate workloads.

Live Patching for ESX

ESX components, VMware tools and security patches can be
applied without reboot or VM evacuation for reduced
downtime.

Consolidated Admin Console

Unified console for easier management of all VVF
components.

Intelligent Alerts
Intelligent clustering of alerts across a timeline for faster
troubleshooting.

vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere

Built-In Security
Plus Foundation

Identity Federation
Connect to Microsoft Active Directory, Microsoft Active
Directory Federation Services (AD FS), Microsoft Entra
ID, Okta, and PingFederate for centralized
authentication and multifactor authentication.

vSphere Trust Authority

Remote attestation for sensitive workloads.

Trusted Platform Module Support

Supports TPM 2.0 adding hardware security
protections to the hypervisor.

Virtual TPM
Adds a virtual TPM 2.0 to virtual machines, enabling in-
guest security features.

5
 vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Built-In Security
Plus Foundation

FIPS 140-2, 140-3, and Common Criteria

Certification Third-party validation of cryptographic
algorithms, and validation of the security inside the
hypervisor.

TLS 1.2 and 1.3

Modern data-in-transit cryptographic protections. 1

Virtual Machine Encryption

Data-at-rest encryption for virtual machine data and disks.

Standard Key Provider

Store vTPM, VM Encryption, and vSAN Data-at-Rest
Encryption cryptographic keys in an external Key
Management System (KMS) using the KMIP protocol.

Native Key Provider

Enable vTPM and other data-at-rest protections
natively within vSphere.

Support for Microsoft Virtualization-Based

Security (VBS)
Enable in-guest protections such as Device Guard and
Credential Guard on Microsoft Windows guest
operating systems.

Per-VM Enhanced vMotion Compatibility

Allows seamless migration across different CPUs across
the hybrid cloud by persisting the EVC mode per-VM
during migrations across clusters and during power
cycles.

Instant Clone
Reduces provisioning times, especially
beneficial for VDI applications.

vCenter Configuration Drift Detection 2

Detect vCenter configuration drift easily against
several vCenter profile templates.

Single Sign-On with VMware Identity Broker2

Single sign-on between vCenter-hosted VMware identity
broker. IT admins can sign-in on any one component and
not need to sign in again to any other VVF component.

Centralized License and Entitlement

Management2
Single place to manage license keys. Provide a-point-
in- time and historical view of license consumption.

6
 vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Application Performance
Plus Foundation

Distributed Resource Scheduler™ (DRS)

Redesigned with a more workload-centric approach,
DRS balances resources allocated to workloads in a
vSphere cluster, versus the previously used cluster-
wide deviation model; this also results in improved
cycle time.

Storage DRS™
Automated load balancing now looks at storage
characteristics to determine the best place for a given
virtual machine’s data when it is created and used over
time.

Distributed Power Management™ (DPM)

Optimizes power consumption by turning off hosts
during periods of reduced demand.

Storage Policy-Based Management

Allows common management across storage tiers and
dynamic storage class-of-service automation via a
policy- driven control plane.

I/O Controls (Network and Storage)

Prioritizes storage and network access by continuously
monitoring I/O load of a storage volume over the network,
and dynamically allocating available I/O resources to
virtual machines according to business needs.

Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) Support

Allows one PCI Express (PCIe) adapter to be presented as
multiple separate logical devices to virtual machines.
Allows users to offload I/O processing and reduce network
latency.

vSphere Persistent Memory™

Leverages Persistent Memory to get DRAM-like
performance with flash-like prices.

NVIDIA GRID Virtual GPU (vGPU)

Enables native 2D and 3D graphics performance for virtual
machines. Supports multiple vGPUs per VM.

Proactive High Availability (HA)

Receive server health information and migrate virtual
machines from degraded hosts before problems occur.

Accelerated Graphics for Virtual Machines

Dynamic DirectPath IO
Support for vGPU and DirectPath I/O initial VM placement.

7
 vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Application Performance
Plus Foundation

Vendor Device Group

Combine multiple PCIe devices into a group that is
assigned as a unit to a VM, giving it user-prescribed
access to that group.

Heterogeneous vGPU profiles on the same GPU

Assign workloads of different vGPU profile types to the
same physical GPU, helping to better consume GPU
resources.

DRS automation for vGPU workloads

GPU-aware DRS intelligently places workloads to
improve GPU utilization.

vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere

Business Continuity
Plus Foundation

vSphere ESX Hypervisor

Provides a robust, production-proven, high-performance
virtualization layer.

vSphere vMotion
Enables live migration of virtual machines with no
disruption to users or loss of service, eliminating the
need to schedule application downtime for planned
server maintenance. The recent enhancements in
vMotion logic provides non- disruptive
operations, irrespective of the size of VMs, specifically
for large and mission critical workloads.

vCenter Hybrid Linked Mode

Enables unified visibility and management across on-
premises vCenter and vCenter on a vSphere enabled
cloud such as VMware Cloud on AWS.

vSMP
Virtual symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) enables
virtual machines to have multiple virtual CPUs.

High Availability (HA)

Automatically restarts your VMs following physical machine
failure.

Storage vMotion
Avoids application downtime for planned storage
maintenance by migrating live virtual machine disk
files across storage arrays.

Fault Tolerance
Provides continuous availability of any application in the
2-vCPU 8-vCPU 8-vCPU
event of a hardware failure—with no data loss or
downtime for workloads up to 8 vCPU.

8
 vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Business Continuity
Plus Foundation

vSphere Replication™
Enables efficient, array-agnostic replication of virtual
machine data over the LAN or WAN, and simplifies
management by enabling replication at the virtual
machine level.

Support for 4K Native Storage

Enhances platform scalability by leveraging high-
capacity drives. Reduces CAPEX.

vSphere Quick Boot™

Skips hardware initialization steps and dramatically
reduces time required for patching and upgrades.

vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA)

Automatically restarts your VMs following physical
machine failure.

vCenter Backup and Restore

Native vCenter Server backup and restore.

vCenter Server Appliance™ Migration

A tool for single-step migration and upgrade of existing
Windows vCenter deployments to vCenter Server Appliance.

vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere

Hybrid Cloud Capabilities
Plus Foundation

Cross vCenter Mixed Version Provisioning

Uses different vCenter versions across on-premises and
vSphere- based public cloud environments, while
allowing provisioning operations such as vMotion, Full
Clone and Cold Migrate to continue on seamlessly.

Hot and Cold Migration to the Cloud

Supports hot and cold migration of workloads across
the hybrid cloud.

Storage -vSAN/HCI vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere

Plus Foundation

vSAN Express Storage Architecture™ (ESA)

A single-tier architecture optimized for NVMe-based
TLC devices for the most demanding and latency-
sensitive workloads.

vSAN Original Storage (OSA)

A two-tier architecture with cache and capacity tiers.

9
 Storage -vSAN/HCI vSphere Standard vSphere Enterprise vSphere
Plus Foundation

Storage Policy-Based Management (SPBM)

Enables automated, policy-driven control over storage
resources to ensure optimal performance, availability, and
resilience for each workload.

Deduplication3 and Compression

Reduces redundant data globally and compresses data with
a highly efficient LZ4 algorithm.

vSAN Storage Clusters (ESA Only)

A deployment option within vSAN that provides
disaggregated storage for vSAN clusters.

Data-at-Rest Encryption and Data-in-Transit Encryption

Data-at-Rest Encryption secures data at ingest as it’s writing to
physical disks. Data-in Transit Encryption protects data moving
between hosts in the vSAN cluster, preventing unauthorized
access.

2-Node Cluster
Supports a two-host configuration, ideal for remote and
edge environments.

Stretched Cluster
Provides high availability by synchronously replicating data
across sites, offering resilience against site failures.

vSAN Data Protection (ESA only)

Enables quickly recover VMs from operational failures or
ransomware attacks, using performant native snapshots
stored locally on the vSAN cluster.

File Services
Enables NFS file shares directly on the vSAN cluster.
Integrated with vSAN’s storage-based management, it
supports SBM, NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 file shares.

Cloud Native Storage (CNS) Control Plane with vSAN

Container Interface (CSI) Driver
Integrates Kubernetes with vSAN, enabling Kubernetes to
dynamically provision, monitor, and manage container volumes
using SPBM (Storage Based Policy Management) controls.

1. For more information about the use of TLS 1.3 with FIPS 140-3 requirements consult the product documentation.
2. Feature enabled via VCF Operations
3. Dedupe announced as part of VVF and VCF 9.0

Copyright © 2024 Broadcom. All rights reserved.

The term “Broadcom” refers to Broadcom Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. For more information, go to www.broadcom.com. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. Broadcom reserves
the right to make changes without further notice to any products or data herein to improve reliability, function, or design. Information furnished by Broadcom is believed to be accurate and reliable. However, Broadcom does not assume any liability
arising out of the application or use of this information, nor the application or use of any product or circuit described herein, neither does it convey any license under its patent rights nor the rights of others.
Item No: FY25-VMW-VSPHERE-MATRIX-USLET-DS-WEB-202411 11/11/2024

10