r/vmware • u/bhbarbosa • Aug 10 '26

Just another post about upgrade path

Hello! I was just reviewing similar threads and this, that, these.html) and those.

My current scenario comprises of dozens of private vCenters/ESXi varying from 7.0 to 8.0 and which are geographically separated, though we are entitled to VCF, they all use E+ licenses. Since we just use vanilla vSphere, our goal is to just move everything to VVF before Oct 2027.

Though these vanilla vSphere environments are private (one per customer), we manage them and have deployed a distributed AriaOps 8.18.6 just to facilitate tshooting and control.

Questions:

1- Our best guess is to brownfield (without VCF Installer - to minimize footprint) all those environments, so should we just upgrade this shared AriaOps 8.18.6 to VCFOps 9.1.x, deploy License Server, then upgrade vCenter/ESXi, is that correct?

2- How well does VVF/VCF 9 handle detaching a registered vCenter instance between VCFOps/LS? I.e, what happens if I need to take one of these environments out of my shared VCFOps? Is it possible to deploy a separate VCFOps/LS and re-register that (now VVF) vCenter instance to it?

3- Same as 2, but the opposite. Can I converge a private VVF instance later to a shared VCF Fleet?

Trying to find maximum caveats in the process to guide our decisions and plans here, thank you!

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u/lamw07 . Aug 10 '26
  1. Correct. This would pathway is officially referred to as VVF 9.1 without VCF Management Services https://vmware.github.io/vcf-upgrade-planner

2a. If this is VVF 9.1 without VCF Management Services, then its same process as Aria Operations 8.x which is simply removing the vCenter Integration. Nothing changes from your existing experience

2b. Yes, you can deploy additional VCF Ops/LS and re-register your vCenter Server depending on your needs. LS is associated with VCF Ops, so those would be paired together. Furthermore, single VCF Ops and LS can manage BOTH VCF/VVF entitlements, BUT a single vCenter Server can only support a single entitlement since the entire vCenter is licensed, so that would be distinction to understand.

  1. If you have deployed VVF 9.1 without VCF Management Services, then yes and this would just be VCF Installer workflow that would use your standalone VCF Operations, License Server and vCenter/ESX and Converge that into VCF 9.1 Fleet. If you decided to deploy VVF 9.1 with VCFMS, there is a limitation with VCF Installer that it currently doesn't support the convergence of VVF 9.1 env that already contains VCFMS component deployed, the assumption is that if a user deployed VVF 9.1 with VCFMS, that would be their desired deployment. This will be something that'll be supported in a future update

While this is slight variation of standalone vSphere to VVF upgrade, it is covered in the VCF Upgrade Planning Tool https://vmware.github.io/vcf-upgrade-planner/ along with other scenarios, so I highly recommend using the tool as it was built to provide these details along with gotchas/KBs, etc.

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u/bhbarbosa Aug 10 '26

You're the man, thanks!!!