VMware Cloud Foundation™ with VMware Tanzu™ enables you to deploy and operate the compute, networking, and storage infrastructure for vSphere IaaS Control Plane workloads. vSphere IaaS Control Plane transforms vSphere to a platform for running Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer.

When enabled on a vSphere cluster, vSphere IaaS Control Plane provides the capability to run Kubernetes workloads directly on ESXi hosts and to create upstream Kubernetes clusters within dedicated resource pools. vSphere IaaS Control Plane can also be enabled on the management domain default cluster.
Note: Starting with vSphere 8.0 Update 3, vSphere with Tanzu was renamed to vSphere IaaS Control Plane.

You validate the underlying infrastructure for vSphere IaaS Control Plane from the SDDC Manager UI and then complete the deployment in the vSphere Client. The SDDC Manager UI refers to the vSphere IaaS Control Plane functionality as Kubernetes - Workload Management.

The Developer Ready Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Foundation validated solution provides design, implementation, and operational guidance for a workload domain that runs vSphere with Tanzu workloads in the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC).

For more information about vSphere IaaS Control Plane, see What Is vSphere Iaas control plane?.