The VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0 Operations deployment documentation describes multiple deployment models for VCF Operations, including Simple, High Availability, and Continuous Availability models.

The Simple deployment model is explicitly defined as a single-node deployment intended for environments that require minimal resource consumption. The documentation states:

“The Simple deployment model deploys a single VCF Operations node and is suitable for smaller environments or environments where high availability is not required.”

In contrast:

High Availability deploys three nodes for redundancy.

Continuous Availability is designed for zero-downtime upgrades and requires even more resources.

Stretched Cluster is not a VCF Operations deployment model but a vSAN cluster configuration.

Since the requirement is the smallest possible resource footprint, the correct model is Simple.