Upgrade VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.x and 5.x

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

This guide provides information and procedures to perform a VCF upgrade and its managed components.

Environment

VCF 4.x

VCF 5.x

Resolution

Preparation

• Review VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) prerequisite documentation for the target version
• Verify hardware compatibility for the ESX hosts for the target version.
• Review release notes for managed components (Aria / NSX / vCenter / ESX)
• Backup - Take file-based backups or image-level backups of SDDC Manager, all vCenter Servers, and NSX Managers. Take a cold snapshot of SDDC Manager.
• Download the VCF upgrade bundle and necessary patches. For offline environments, refer to Offline Download of VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.x Upgrade Bundles
• Prechecks - Leverage the LCM pre-check functionality within SDDC Manager to determine any failures or warnings that may affect the upgrade. 
• Run VCF-VDT to check for potential issues.

Upgrade Sequence

• VCF upgrade sequence is determined as follows:
  • SDDC Manager
  • Aria Suite
  • NSX
  • vCenter
  • ESX
• VCF follows the standardize upgrade sequence for all VMware products, if there are additional VMware products in the environment that are not included in the VCF BOM, refer to the following guide to determine when to plan their upgrade - Update Sequence for VMware vSphere 8.0 and Compatible VMware Products

Upgrade Procedure

• Upgrade the Management Domain 
• Upgrade the Workload Domains 
  
  Additional upgrade functionality:
  
  
• Using Async Patch Tool
• Using FlexBOM to upgrade BOM components (available from VCF 5.2 and later)

Post-Upgrade Tasks

• Verify the health and status of all VCF managed components (SDDC Manager, vCenter, NSX Manager, ESXi hosts).
• Update any third-party integrations or plugins as needed.
• Perform a full backup of the upgraded VCF environment.

Additional Information

If you have advanced Support with a Support Account Manager (SAM) and/or Dedicated Technical Support Engineer (DTSE) you are eligible for a proactive upgrade case. Please see Proactive Upgrade Case for VCF environments for further details.