Before You Upgrade to VCF 9.1: What You Need to Have Ready
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This is not a point release
Every major version of VCF has carried some amount of "read the upgrade guide" overhead. But VCF 9.1 is categorically different. The upgrade from 9.0 to 9.1 is the moment your management plane physically transforms, retiring the Fleet Management Appliance, introducing a Kubernetes-based runtime and deploying a full suite of containerized management services in its place. Workloads keep running throughout. Your management visibility does not. That gap is the thing to plan for.
This post, Part 1 of a two-part series, focuses on what needs to be in place before you open the change window. The prerequisites, the IP planning, the pre-flight checks and the upgrade sequence you'll follow. Get these right and the upgrade itself follows a predictable path. Part 2 covers the execution: what actually happens at each step, what changes automatically and the one point in the process where there's no going back
| Scope: This post covers upgrading from VCF 9.0.x to 9.1. The management domain upgrade is mandatory. Workload domain upgrades are optional and can be deferred. There is no supported rollback path once VCF Management Services are deployed. |
Before you touch anything: pre-flight requirements
The upgrade has hard prerequisites that cannot be satisfied after you start. Catching these gaps before you begin is the difference between a smooth change window and an unplanned extension.
VCF Operations must already be running
VCF Operations (formerly VMware Aria Operations) is a required component in VCF 9 and later. The upgrade sequence begins with upgrading VCF Operations.
A cloud proxy must exist in the first VCF Instance
A cloud proxy in the VCF Instance that hosts VCF Operations is required for the integration between VCF Operations, SDDC Manager and VCF Management Services. This is a hard gate; if a cloud proxy is not present in the first VCF Instance, the upgrade cannot complete. Verify this before scheduling your maintenance window. If cloud proxies are present, they will be upgraded automatically during the VCF Operations upgrade step.
Identity Broker: check its network location
If your environment has VCF Identity Broker 9.0.x running in appliance mode, it must be deployed on the management network and on a supported datastore before the upgrade begins. If it is not, there is a pre-upgrade step to redeploy it to the correct network. Embedded Identity Broker (managed inside vCenter) upgrades automatically during the vCenter upgrade and does not require this step.
IP planning: have your addresses ready
Deploying VCF Management Services, the largest single step in the upgrade, requires a dedicated /27 CIDR block (30 usable IPs) for VCF Services Runtime, plus five FQDNs that resolve to unique IP addresses outside that CIDR block. These are not configured ahead of time; they are entered as inputs during the deployment wizard. But DNS must already resolve them before you reach that step. Do this work before the change window opens.
Required inputs for VCF Management Services deployment: * /27 CIDR block for VCF Services Runtime node IPs and virtual IP * VCF Services Runtime FQDN, which must resolve to a unique IP outside the /27 * Fleet Component FQDN covers Fleet Lifecycle, Salt RaaS, Software Depot * Instance Component FQDN covers SDDC Lifecycle, Salt Master, Telemetry * Identity Broker FQDN, if not already deployed * License Server FQDN, IPv4 only All FQDNs must be lowercase. Capital letters in any FQDN will cause deployment to fail. |
Backups and snapshots
Before starting, take a snapshot of the SDDC Manager appliance and make sure you have a recent successful backup to an external SFTP server. Also take snapshots of each VCF Operations node; these allow recovery if the VCF Operations upgrade fails partway through. Delete the snapshots after the upgrade completes successfully to avoid performance impact.
Run the upgrade prechecks
SDDC Manager includes a precheck function that validates the environment before allowing an upgrade to proceed. Run these and resolve every flagged issue before opening your maintenance window. Issues that fail precheck will block the upgrade, and troubleshooting them during a change window is avoidable.
Check the interoperability matrix
If your environment includes VMware Avi Load Balancer, verify that your Avi version is compatible with SDDC Manager 9.1 using the Broadcom Product Interoperability Matrix before you begin. Incompatible Avi versions can cause the SDDC Manager upgrade step to fail.
The upgrade sequence: order is enforced
The upgrade must follow a strict sequence. Attempting to upgrade components out of order is not supported and will fail. The mandatory portion covers the management domain of the first VCF Instance. Everything else, additional VCF Instances, workload domains and optional components, can follow after the management domain is stable.
| Step | Component | Status | Notes |
| 1 | VCF Operations 9.1 | Mandatory, first step, always | Upgrade via PAK file in the VCF Operations admin UI. Cloud proxies upgrade automatically. Fleet Management Appliance is decommissioned. |
| 2 | SDDC Manager 9.1 | Mandatory | Triggered from VCF Operations UI. After upgrade, reconfigure the depot to use an activation code from the VCF Business Services console. |
| 3 | Deploy VCF Management Services | Mandatory | Deploys VCF Services Runtime and all management services on the first VCF Instance. Requires the /27 CIDR and FQDNs. One-way operation. |
| 4 | Configure Fleet Software Depot | Mandatory before further upgrades | Configure the new fleet-level Software Depot (now a managed service) before proceeding with any additional component upgrades. |
| 5 | Optional Components | Optional | VCF Automation, VCF Operations for Networks, Log Management, Identity Broker (appliance mode), VCF Operations Orchestrator. Any order. |
| 6 | Management Domain Components | Optional timing | vCenter, NSX, ESXi, vSAN in the management domain. Can be performed after management services are stable. |
| 7 | Workload Domains | Fully optional | Can be upgraded at any time after the management domain of the respective VCF Instance is at 9.1. No urgency requirement. |
| Coming up in Part 2: Part 2 "The VCF 9.1 Upgrade, Step by Step: What Actually Happens" is where the irreversible decisions happen. We'll walk through each step of the upgrade execution, covering what to watch for, what changes automatically and the one point in the process where there's no going back. |