Chapter 3. VMware vSphere: The SDDC Foundation
VMware vSphere is the foundation for the SDDC. It is the hypervisor to build the rest of the automation and management functionally upon. Consider it as the basement for your data center automation. vSphere is often seen as the given infrastructure provider. Like a real basement, it is sometimes not seen as the important bit of a cloud or SDDC environment.
However, this does not mean that it is unimportant, as every support or basement installation; if you make mistakes here, your whole SDDC might be weak and loose. Also, vSphere is offering automation, which is built already into the hypervisor. While some of these functions might be not as important for traditional environments, they are a huge time saver for an SDDC. Every vSphere functionality, which is offering time and effort savings should be strongly considered for the SDDC.
Note
If you haven't already considered an Enterprise Plus license for vSphere, you may do so now...