Importing a vCenter 8.x as a Workload Domain into a VCF 9.0 Instance

As customers are adopting VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0, there is still backwards compatibility support for 8.x vCenter instances as well as licensing.

Please review Broadcom documentation on requirements and supported configurations; Import an Existing vCenter to Create a Workload Domain

Here is some information for my 8.x vCenter to be Imported

• vCenter 8.0 U3g
• 3 host cluster with DRS enabled
• ESX hosts running 8.0 U3e
• VDS with 2 uplinks attached from all hosts
• NFS v3 backed datastore for principal storage (Synology)
• vCenter appliance VM resides in the vCenter being imported
• Cluster is using baselines for lifecycle (did this on purpose)
• 4 DNS records & 3 IPs reserved an NSX 3 node cluster.

Since the vCenter is NOT connected to any NSX instance, a new NSX instance will be created.

The term ‘Import’ is used when the action is performed within VCF Operations. ‘Converge’ is used when using the VCF Installer.

The actions are performed within the VCF Operations 9 console.

From the VCF Operations home page go to Inventory >> select the Organization listed under VCF Instances and you will see a drop-down menu for ‘ADD A WORKLOAD DOMAIN’ select ‘Import a vCenter’

Input a unique name for the Workload Domain

Selecting ‘Specify an external vCenter‘ and un-check the vCenter connected to an NSX instance. Fill out authentication details of the vCenter

Confirm thumbprint and Acknowledge

Once you click Next, Prechecks will kick off

I did have some ‘Warnings’ relating to upgrade policy settings, it allows for me to resume. This might be something to revisit when SDDC Manager take on lifecycle.

Because a vCenter 8.x environment is being imported, NSX 4.x will require 3 managers.

For the Networking section, populate fields for an NSX Management Cluster. This will also use the same management network the vCenter is on.

I will keep the default NSX Overlay options and define my own passwords

At Validation I got hit with some additional errors. For the particular NSX version, binaries needed to be downloaded.

Just directed myself to Fleet Management and started the download **Notice you have to select VCF 5.2 from the version drop-down. Also had to look inside the Patch Binaries for the particular version.

Final Validation succeeded

Review

Once it kicked off, the rest can be monitored in Tasks under Fleet Management and when complete, you will have a Workload Domain added to your organization.