VMware Cloud Foundation 9 licensing guide

VCF is billed on physical cores, never on VMs, sockets or memory. Two rules set the quantity before any price applies.

• 16 cores per CPU. Broadcom's core-counting article says you must license a minimum of 16 physical cores for each CPU, even if the CPU has fewer. A host with two 8-core CPUs is licensed as 32 cores.
• 72 cores per order. Broadcom sets a 72-core minimum for each order. A small estate is billed for 72 cores whatever it runs.

The third quantity is storage. VCF includes 1 TiB of vSAN entitlement for each VCF core, and VVF includes 0.25 TiB for each VVF core, rounded up to the next TiB. Broadcom counts TiB on the total raw physical storage that every ESXi host contributes to your vSAN clusters, not on the datastore capacity the vSphere Client shows. Capacity beyond the entitlement is bought as a vSAN add-on, so a storage-heavy estate can need a larger line on the quote than its cores suggest.

One VCF subscription licenses the whole private cloud platform per core, so you do not count each component on its own. It covers the ESX hypervisor and vCenter, vSAN storage, NSX networking, VCF Operations for monitoring and for registering the licence, and VCF Automation for self-service provisioning of workloads. SDDC Manager handles lifecycle management for a VCF instance built with the VCF Installer. The V9 licensing article says that once a vCenter holds its primary license, the other components such as ESX and NSX are licensed automatically.

VVF 9 covers the vSphere and vSAN layer without NSX, VCF Automation or SDDC Manager, which is why the same core count prices much lower. Read the VCF licensing explainer for the component-by-component split, and ask for both bundles on the same quote before you decide that the VCF premium buys something you will deploy.

Broadcom released VCF and VVF 9.0 on 17 June 2025, and its Cloud Foundation blog announced VCF 9.1 general availability on 12 May 2026. For licensing, the change that matters is how the entitlement is applied.

• Subscription license files replace 25-character keys. Broadcom's V9 licensing article says licenses are managed and applied through a VCF Operations instance and the VCF Business Services console.
• Registration allocates your cores. When you register VCF Operations, the purchased cores are allocated into a default pool for each product, plus a vSAN TiB license. The allocation sets the upper limit for the environment, and you can change it later. One allocation cannot span two VCF Operations instances.
• A 90-day evaluation window. After an install or upgrade, VCF Operations runs in evaluation mode for up to 90 days, and you must register it inside that window.
• Connected or disconnected. A connected site pastes an activation code and the license file downloads. A dark site imports the file by hand after registration.
• One primary license. Once a vCenter holds its primary license, components such as ESX and NSX are licensed automatically.

Moving from 9.0 to 9.1 should not need a new subscription: a reseller write-up dated 29 May 2026 (Schneider IT Management) reports that an active VCF 9 subscription covers both. Confirm it against your own entitlement before relying on it.

Version 9 is sold in two bundles. Broadcom's vSphere product line comparison, checked 26 October 2026, says vSphere Standard and vSphere Enterprise Plus are only available as versions up to 8 Update 3, and that vSphere 9.1 features come only with vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF). If you need version 9, the choice is VVF or VCF.

The licence does not upgrade; the entitlement does. Broadcom's upgrade-path article says a traditional license key cannot be upgraded from 8.x to 9.x, and the attempt fails with "No data available to upgrade". Existing keys do not need upgrading to keep running version 8. A subscription that is eligible for version 9 shows up on its own in the VCF Business Services console, and an active license with no error messages confirms you qualify.

1. Check the entitlement. Sign in at vcf.broadcom.com, open Licenses and confirm a VCF 9 or VVF 9 license is listed. You need the User Administrator or Product Administrator site role, or Site Access plus a suitable tenant role.
2. Compare cores. The licensed core count must cover the cores on the hosts you will run. If the estate grew since the last quote, add cores before you register.
3. Upgrade the management layer first. VCF Operations 9.x is installed with the VCF Installer, or by upgrading VMware Aria Operations. Register it within the 90-day window and allocate cores.
4. Then upgrade the hosts. vCenter takes the primary license and the other components follow.

The commercial point is timing. A perpetual key or an older subscription that does not include version 9 needs a version-9 subscription first, and vSphere 8 general support ends on 11 October 2027, so a renewal that lands before then is the natural moment to price version 9 alongside version 8.

Two estates, priced on the 3-year ranges AceMQ published from real 2026 quotes. The arithmetic is illustrative: your per-core rate depends on your Broadcom account, and a real quote replaces it.