The release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF 9.0) brings one of the most significant evolutions in vSAN to date—delivering performance, efficiency, and flexibility enhancements tailored for today’s demanding workloads. With data growth accelerating and enterprises embracing AI, analytics, and hybrid cloud strategies, storage platforms must do more than just store bits—they must accelerate innovation, protect critical assets, and optimize resource usage. In VCF 9, vSAN introduces breakthrough capabilities like  cluster-wide global deduplication ,  native vSAN-to-vSAN replication with deep , immutable snapshots , and major data path performance optimizations . Combined with ESA’s blistering IOPS performance, advanced memory tiering, and greater storage architecture flexibility, these features address modern enterprise needs ranging from AI/ML pipelines to cyber-resilient disaster recovery. In this article, we’ll explore the most im...