Upgrade from vSphere 8 to a VCF 9.1 Minimal Deployment

In the vSphere 8 era, many small environments relied on the lean duo of ESXi and vCenter for simplicity and low overhead. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 evolves this model into a full-stack private cloud, offering automated lifecycle management, advanced networking, native container support, application blueprint provisioning, private AI, and much more--albeit with higher resource demands.

Fortunately, a minimal VCF installation enables smaller shops to use vCenter and ESX 9.1 without overcommitting their hardware. It is important to understand that you will not get all the full-stack VCF 9.1 private cloud features and benefits when you perform a minimal installation or upgrade. This article summarizes the process of upgrading vSphere 8 (vCenter 8 and ESX 8) to VCF 9.1.

Why vSAN is Best for VMware Cloud Foundation

For VMware practitioners, the shift from traditional three-tier architectures to a software-defined data center (SDDC) isn't just about consolidation—it’s about regaining control. At the heart of this evolution is VMware vSAN, the native storage engine for VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).  vSAN is the only option that delivers a full-stack, automated experience from Day 0 through Day 2 and it is included with your VCF subscription. Here is why vSAN remains the gold standard for VCF deployments.

From vSphere 8 with VCF Operations to VCF 9

UPDATE: Consider deploying VCF 9.1. It is the latest version of VCF that includes new features and functionality, as well as, the latest bug fixes and security updates. This blog article discusses upgrading from vSphere 8 to a minimal installation of VCF 9.1: Upgrade from vSphere 8 to a VCF 9.1 Minimal Deployment

This post is a followup article to VCF Operations 9 with vSphere 8 for smaller shops ready to make the jump to VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9. A high-level overview is provided here. This article is not step-by-step instructions. See the VCF documentation for detailed guidance. The assumption from a licensing perspective is that your organization purchased a VCF subscription.

VCF Operations 9 with vSphere 8

There is no need to wait to deploy VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operation 9 if you are running vSphere 8. It is optional with version 8, but required for version 9 so you might as well deploy it now if you are entitled to it through your subscription. VCF Operations provides many benefits to vSphere environments such as...

• AI-Assisted Diagnostics: Features enhanced "Diagnostic Findings" to proactively identify misconfigurations and risks before they cause downtime.

• NVMe Memory Tiering Visibility: Monitoring vSphere 8’s NVMe-based memory tiering, helping admins optimize DRAM vs. NVMe cost/performance ratios.

• Direct Support Integration: Enables administrators to generate log bundles and attach them directly to Broadcom Support cases from within the Operations console.

• Unified License Management: Unified license key management for the VCF subscription model, synchronizing entitlements across vCenter and ESXi 8.x hosts.

• Sustainable Infrastructure Metrics: Advanced reporting on power consumption and carbon footprint, mapped to specific vSphere clusters and workloads to meet green-IT initiatives.

This article outlines the deployment and configuration steps for deploying VCF Operations 9 in a vSphere 8 environment. 

Upgrading a Minimal Installation of VCF 9.0.1 to 9.0.2

Smaller environments running VCF 9 might have a subset of the VCF components/appliances deployed. This minimizes the virtual infrastructure management footprint and resource consumption. For example, a three-host environment might have VCF Operations 9 + vCenter 9 + ESX 9. The downside to these types of deployments is you lose some of the VCF functionality such as fleet management. This begs the question, "How do I update the components I have?" You can upgrade version 9 components such as VCF Operations, vCenter, and ESX similar how you upgraded version 8.