VCF 9: The New Era of Password Management via VCF Operations

For years, the SDDC Manager GUI was the undisputed heart of VMware Cloud Foundation operations. If you needed to rotate a service account or update an admin credential, Security > Password Management was your destination.

With the arrival of VCF 9, that paradigm has shifted. As part of a broader move toward a "unified cloud console," password management has migrated into VCF Operations. This isn't just a UI facelift—it’s a move toward a centralized "Fleet Management" model that treats your entire private cloud as a single entity rather than a collection of silos.

Why the Shift from SDDC Manager?

In previous versions, SDDC Manager was the primary orchestrator, but as environments grew, admins often found themselves bouncing between SDDC Manager, vCenter, and various Aria interfaces.

VCF 9 solves this by:

• Unified Visibility: Viewing the credential health of your entire fleet (Compute, Network, Storage, and Automation) in one place.

• Reduced Complexity: Leveraging VCF SSO to access operational tasks without re-authenticating into sub-components.

• Fleet-Scale Management: Handling passwords across multiple VCF instances from a single operational plane.

Step-by-Step: Managing Passwords in VCF Operations

The process is now integrated into the Fleet Management workflow. Here is how you update a component password (using VCF Automation as an example)

1.     Login to VCF ops using VCFSSO or local account

2.     Click on Fleet management -> password

3. Under VCF Management select VCF automation check box and click Apply
   

   

4. Under VCF components Select VCF Automation for admin user and click update password
   

   

5. Click Update Password and give your new password
   

   

6. Once the password is update you will see the msg as successful .
   

   

Conclusion

The migration of password management to VCF Operations represents VMware's commitment to a more "cloud-like" experience for on-premises infrastructure. By centralizing these Day 2 tasks, VCF 9 reduces the operational overhead of maintaining security compliance across large-scale deployments.