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Upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.2 to 9.1: The Ultimate Step-by-Step Runbook Phase 3

  • viquarmca
  • 20 minutes ago
  • 5 min read

In previous blog we continue the upgrade for VCF 9.1 sequence , Today we will discuss VCF Management services structure before 9.1 , what is VCMS , how will it benefit customers and deployment steps . Let us understand how was VCF managing the VCF Management structure before 9.1.


How was VCF Management structured before 9.1?

Prior to VCF 9.1 (such as in legacy VCF 5.x or the initial VCF 9.0 release), management was heavily reliant on separate, monolithic appliances:

  1.  Before VCF 9 (VCF 5.x):

    Management, lifecycle orchestration, operations, and logging were handled by several disparate, standalone appliances like Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager (vRSLCM) and VMware Identity Manager (vIDM).

  2.  In VCF 9.0:

    VMware introduced the standalone VCF Operations Fleet Management Appliance (also referred to as the Fleet Manager) to begin centralizing these tasks and replacing vRSLCM. However, it was still a separate monolithic virtual appliance (OVA)


What is the VCF Management Service (VCMS)?

VCF Management Services (VCMS) is a unified, service-oriented runtime and modular suite of components introduced in VCF 9.1. It acts as a common runtime that unifies the architecture of lifecycle and operational capabilities across the entire VCF fleet.

Key aspects of VCMS include:

  • VCF Services Runtime: A shared containerized/Kubernetes-based runtime that provides a unified foundation for VCF services.

  • Modular Services: Rather than relying on separate virtual appliances, critical management capabilities run as services on this runtime.

  • Fleet and Instance Lifecycle: It includes services like Fleet Lifecycle and SDDC Lifecycle which run natively within the VCF Management Services platform.

  • License Server Integration: It embeds the License Server directly as a part of VCF Operations to manage your platform's licenses in a secured and integrated manner.


What is changing in VCF 9.1?

With VCF 9.1, VMware has completely deprecated and removed the standalone Fleet Management Appliance:

  • No Standalone OVA: The Fleet Management Appliance is no longer available as a separate OVA or part of the VCF 9.1 Bill of Materials (BOM).

  • Native Convergence: Fleet management and lifecycle orchestration capabilities have been natively converged into VCF Operations and the containerized VCF Management Services (VCMS).

  • Decommissioning Legacy VMs: During the upgrade to 9.1, legacy 9.0.x Fleet Management VMs are powered down and decommissioned. Their tasks are taken over by the native Fleet Lifecycle and SDDC Lifecycle services.


How will this change benefit customers ?

Transitioning to VCF Management Services in 9.1 provides several significant operational and business advantages:

1. Reduced Resource Footprint and Cost

By eliminating separate, heavy monolithic virtual appliances (such as Aria Suite Lifecycle, VMware Identity Manager, and the 9.0 Fleet Management Appliance), you can reclaim significant CPU, memory, and storage resources in your management domains.

2. Simplified Sizing and Capacity Planning

The platform introduces standardized "T-Shirt sizing" for VCMS, simplifying your resource forecasting and deployment decisions.

3. Streamlined Fleet-Wide Lifecycle and Operations

VCMS serves as a single control plane inside VCF. Operations like managing user-imported certificates, processing certificate signing requests (CSRs), and updating software binaries via software depots are now natively integrated. This reduces the risk of operational errors when managing certificates and credentials.

4. Unified and Secure Identity Management

Legacy identity systems are migrated to the integrated VCF Identity Broker (VIDB) running inside the VCF Services Runtime. This provides a single, cohesive Identity and Access Management (IAM) framework for your private cloud.

5. Faster Time-to-Value

With a highly modular, containerized architecture, deploying new features, updates, or integrating third-party solutions becomes significantly faster and less disruptive, reducing system-wide maintenance windows.


Deploy VCF Management Services Prerequisites :

After we successfully upgrade the VCF operation and SDDC Manager to VCF 9.1, the Next step is to deploy the VCF Management services , Let us see what are the prerequisites before we start the deployment .


Before you can deploy the VCF management services ensure that the following prerequisites are met.


  • Verify that VCF Operations and SDDC Manager are at version 9.1

  • Verify that your certificates are configured and use the proper Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN)

  • Download the required install binaries in the software depot for the following VCF management services components

    • VCF services runtime

    • Fleet lifecycle

    • SDDC lifecycle

    • Software depot

    • Identity broker

    • Salt RaaS

    • Salt master

    • Telemetry

    • License server


  • Obtain administrative credentials for the VCF Operations instance to register the components with

  • .Each FQDN must resolve to a unique, currently unassigned IP address, and those IP addresses must not overlap with any IP ranges already reserved for VCF services runtime nodes or VCF Automation nodes.

    • Fleet Component 1 FQDN** (Note the FQDN should be not be in CAPITAL Letter all must be lower case )

    • Instance component 1 FQDN ** (Note the FQDN should be not be in CAPITAL Letter all must be lower case )

    • VCF services runtime 1 FQDN ** (Note the FQDN should be not be in CAPITAL Letter all must be lower case )

    • License Server 1 FQDN **

    • A minimum of 12 IP addresses are required for deployment. Allocate a range of IP addresses expressed as a /28 CIDR block. For example, 192.168.1.0/28 covers 192.168.1.0 – 192.168.1.15.

    • Recommended: 30 IP addresses can be added and are reserved for new VCF management services components or scaling out existing components. Allocate a range of IP addresses expressed as a /27 CIDR block. For example, 192.168.2.0/27 covers 192.168.2.0 – 192.168.2.31.



Detailed Step-by-Step Deployment of VCFMS :

Phase 2 : Deploy VCF Management Service 9.1

  1. Log in to VCF Operations > Build -> Lifecycle -> VCF Instance -> SDDC Manager Upgrade tab , click the Available upgrade tab and Click Install

  2. It open a new wizard to enter the VCF Operations FQDN and Admin password , Click connect

  3. Here you mention the reserved ip followed by the fqdn and click install

  4. You can monitor the deployment workflow from sddc manager task view . After you deploy VCF Management Services, you’ll see 4 vms + the license server

Thats it to complete the deployment , it took more than 6 hours to complete the deployment . Once this is done we move forward to the next upgrade that is VCF Automation , but i dont have it in my environment so we are going to Identity Broker and VCF Operation for network and VCF Operations for logs if u have in ur environment.

Transfer the license : if your VCF operation instance is in connect mode , the license server is automatically registered and licenses are automatically transferred to the license sever , if its in disconnected mode you must register the license server with the VCF business service console.

Then we move forward to the core components upgrade that is NSX manager , vCenter and ESX upgrade. which we will talk in our upcoming blogs .

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