The video below walks through upgrading a VCF Management Domain. This includes an NSX single instance, EDGE nodes, ESXi hosts in a vSAN cluster and vCenter Server.
Please review the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Release Notes
Category: VCF Operations
[Video] – Upgrading VCF Operations to 9.0.2
The video below goes through upgrading VCF Operations instance to 9.0.2 in my home lab. This was originally deployed with VCF as a Single which was a Primary node and a single collector.
Please review the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Release Notes
[Video] Upgrading VCF Fleet Management to 9.0.2
The video below goes through upgrading the VCF Fleet Management Appliance in my home lab.
Please review the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Release Notes
Adding a VI Workload Domain as a VCF Management Deployment Target
In lab I have some resource limitations when deploying some of our larger VCF appliances; VCF Automation & VCF Operations for Networks.
Within the VCF Management interface, there is a section to add additional vCenters where we can deploy VCF appliances.
From the VCF Operations console go to Fleet Management >> Lifecycle >> VCF Management >> Settings >> Deployment Targets. Click ‘Add Deployment Target’
If the vCenter is added under Integrations, it appears under our organization and allow us to validate and Add.
Tasks will kick off and completed successfully.
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.
