Google Cloud launched a new self managed offering supporting VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) with license portability.

Part of the Google Cloud Modernize portfolio, Google’s new VMware solution is designed to give full administrative control over VMware environments on dedicated bare-metal infrastructure. Similar to Amazon Elastic VMware Service (EVS) from Amazon Web Services (AWS), the offering supports Broadcom's portable VCF subscriptions through a bring-your-own-license model. Customers are able to apply Google Cloud spending commitments and flexible use-related discounts toward the underlying architecture, and can also manage deployments themselves or enlist partners for migration, implementation, and ongoing operations.

The service complements Google Cloud VMware Engine, which runs VCF 5.2 with patching, updates, and monitoring managed by the hyperscaler. The self-managed alternative supports all instances of VCF 9, allowing users to oversee lifecycle management and retain root-level access to ESXi, vCenter, NSX Manager, and other components.

The platform runs on Google Compute Engine Z3 bare-metal instances powered by fourth-generation Intel Xeon processors. Each node provides 96 physical cores, 1.5 terabytes (TB) of RAM, 72 TB of NVMe storage, and 200 Gb/s networking, with VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) providing hyperconverged storage capabilities. External NetApp Volumes are also supported.

Google claimed that NVMe memory tiering can reduce server total cost of ownership (TCO) by up to 40%, while vSAN ESA can lower storage TCO by as much as 39% compared with traditional external arrays.

On the networking side, the service integrates with Google's Andromeda infrastructure and Network Connectivity Center to enable connectivity across multiple virtual private clouds and distributed environments. VMware workloads can also connect to native Google Cloud services, including BigQuery, Gemini, and Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE).

The service broadens the Broadcom/Google relationship, after Google Cloud was picked in 2024 as the first hyperscale cloud partner for VCF licensing. Broadcom's subsequent licensing overhaul forced Google to stop selling new license-bundled offerings, making portable VCF subscriptions mandatory since November 2025.

Besides AWS and Google, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers similar customer-managed capabilities out of the hyperscale brigade. Microsoft continues to provide Azure VMware Solution (AVS) as a fully managed service, but is retiring usage based pricing for VMware licenses at the end of this month.