☁️Google Cloud Ships Self-Managed VMware VCF 9.x on Bare Metal in 22 Regions

Your VMware root access just got a Google Cloud option

Google Cloud just made a self-managed VMware option generally available, and it runs VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x on dedicated bare metal. You get root access across ESXi, vCenter, and NSX. You also own the upgrades and patching, through VCF Operations, or hand that work to a partner. If you've been stuck on VMware Engine's managed VCF 5.2, this is the escape hatch. Google absorbs Broadcom's release cadence and licensing changes in the managed model. The self-managed model hands both back to you, and you can bring portable VCF subscriptions you already own. The catch: you run the environment, and Google provisions it then steps back. Each z3-highmem-192-highlssd-metal instance packs 96 physical cores on 4th-gen Xeon, 1.5 TB of memory, 72 TB of local NVMe, and 200 Gbps networking. Storage is vSAN on local NVMe, with NetApp Volumes as an external datastore. Google cites up to 40% lower server TCO from NVMe memory tiering and up to 39% lower storage TCO from vSAN ESA. Those are vendor numbers, so benchmark them against your own workload. The prerequisites are real. Your project needs VLAN-based networking, your VPC needs an 8896-byte MTU, and you must pre-create management, vSAN, vMotion, and two NSX subnets. The announcement gives no pricing, no SLA, no list of the 22 regions, and no migration path from VCF 5.2. Start with Google's account teams or an authorized partner, and get those answers in writing first.