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Two weeks ago, I made the case for how Cisco ACI was still relevant as the only turn-key data centre networking solution for large and complex environments. Right on cue, Broadcom and Arista have announced closer integration between VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) and Arista CloudVision. The aim is to create a single, unified data centre network fabric that incorporates physical and virtual workloads.
The relationship between Broadcom and Arista is not new. For over 15 years, Arista have been using Broadcom ASICs in their switches, and last summer Arista completed the acquisition of VeloCloud, which Broadcom considered surplus to requirements when acquiring VMware. More pertinent though is the long-time integration between VMware NSX and Arista CloudVision.
The recent announcement allows for the creation of a common control plane between VCF and Arista. VCF Route Controllers and Arista EVPN Gateways will peer directly using MP-BGP EVPN. This will allow for a routing exchange between the virtual VCF world and the physical Arista fabric. There will also be a 1-1 mapping between VCF Transit Gateway and the equivalent Arista Layer 3 VNI. This will enable an end-to-end VXLAN data plane.
Once available in VCF 9.1, the combination of Arista and VCF will be a very powerful turnkey data centre solution. Arista is one of the market-leading data centre switching vendors, delivers a robust underlay and an ability to connect physical devices, all of which is managed with CloudVision. VMware VCF is a market-leading Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC) and provides an SDN overlay that includes Layer 2, Layer 3, load balancing, and firewall services.
Final note, as we know from Cisco ACI, turnkey also means lock-in. So, you will need to drink the Broadcom flavoured VMware Kool-Aid.
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2026/05/05/announcing-evpn-interoperability-with-arista-networks-vcf-9-1/