vSphere 8 Embedded Foundation is designed for smaller environments, so it has limitations on scalability compared to the full vSphere platform. It supports fewer hosts (typically up to 4) and is best suited for environments with moderate resource demands. For larger deployments, upgrading to full vSphere licenses is recommended.

• Supported hardware: Servers compatible with ESXi 8.0.
• Storage: Disk space sufficient for running the hypervisor and any VMs.
• Memory: 4 GB of RAM per core is recommended.
• CPU: 64bit x86 processor.

vSphere 8 Embedded Foundation includes:

• Can run several virtual machines on a single physical server using ESXi a bare metal hypervisor.
• vCenter Server: A centralized platform that offers necessary services like performance management, monitoring, and VM provisioning for managing ESXi hosts and virtual machines.

The core layer of VMware's virtualization platform, VMware vSphere 8 Embedded Foundation, is made for managing and operating virtual machines in an extremely effective and scalable environment. VMware Cloud Foundation and VMware vSAN both come with an embedded version of Embedded Foundation, which facilitates the streamlined deployment of core infrastructure services.

The primary difference is that Embedded Foundation is tailored for specific VMware product suites, such as vSAN and VMware Cloud Foundation, and is designed to support a smaller number of hosts compared to the full vSphere platform. It offers essential virtualization and management services without the need for full vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses.