During a discovery workshop for a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) design, the customer provided the...

Comprehensive and Detailed Explanation (Based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Design Guide):

According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Architecture and Design Guide, Cloud Zones in VCF Automation (Aria Automation) define logical groupings of compute resources that can be allocated to different projects or business units. It specifies:

“Cloud zones provide segmentation and allocation of infrastructure resources such as clusters and hosts. They allow administrators to ensure dedicated or shared access to compute resources across projects.”

By mapping specific clusters or compute pools to business units via Cloud Zones, IT Services can maintain central management within a single workload domain while granting exclusive hardware access per business unit. Standardized catalog items can still be offered through VCF Automation projects, with zone-specific deployment constraints to enforce isolation.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Design Guide — “Cloud Zone Resource Allocation and Governance.” (pp. 6446–6450)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.4 Operations Guide — “Project Resource Management using Cloud Zones.”