Using vSphere Supervisor? Here’s a Comprehensive Guide to Upgrading to VCF 5.2.1  

As we continue to enhance and support the evolving needs of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) users, an important milestone is approaching. The last supported version of Kubernetes on VCF 4.x (vCenter 7.x) will be the minor version 1.28, with its End of Service scheduled for May 28, 2025. This presents a timely opportunity to upgrade to VCF 5.2.x, which offers a range of exciting improvements and new capabilities designed to enhance your infrastructure management experience.

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.x introduces significant enhancements in lifecycle management, networking, and security, offering improved operational efficiency and streamlined upgrades. This blog post contains additional instructions and recommendations for upgrading to VCF 5.2.x when vSphere Supervisor is enabled on your VCF 4.5.x deployments. The objective of this blog is to help ensure a smooth transition while maintaining the integrity of your Kubernetes environments and leveraging the new features effectively. The blog covers the following topics: 

• Supervisor Overview 
• Supervisor Upgrade considerations
• Upgrade to VCF 5.2.x with vSphere Supervisor
• VCF Flexible BOM Upgrade 
• Planning Target VCF Version
• Recommended Upgrade Path from 4.5.2
• Alternate vCenter Versions
• Important Resources

Supervisor Overview

vSphere Supervisor can transform existing infrastructure into a platform capable of  running Kubernetes workloads along with Virtual Machine applications. Once enabled on vSphere clusters, vSphere Supervisor creates a Kubernetes control plane directly in the hypervisor layer. You can then run containerized workloads by deploying vSphere Pods, or you can create Certified Kubernetes clusters through the vSphere Kubernetes Service and run your applications inside these clusters. Supervisor is able to provide these abilities through an integrated declarative API powered by Kubernetes. 

Supervisor Upgrade Considerations (Skip if you are already familiar) 

The Supervisor software is bundled and delivered as part of vCenter. It runs on Kubernetes and includes three consecutive Kubernetes versions. When upgrading vCenter, the Supervisor’s Kubernetes must also be upgraded incrementally, as Kubernetes minor versions cannot be skipped. This three-version packaging ensures compatibility with a wider range of vCenter versions, offering customers greater flexibility during upgrades. This means, when upgrading vCenter, there must be a common Kubernetes minor version between the existing vCenter and the target vCenter for Supervisor to be upgraded. 

If the target vCenter does not have a common Supervisor Version, the vCenter upgrade will be blocked. This constraint is in addition to other VCF upgrade constraints. Additionally, different known issues may exist in each version as documented in the relevant release notes. With all of these factors, determining the optimal upgrade path on your own can be challenging. Consider this sample interoperability:

Upgrading to VCF 5.2.x with vSphere Supervisor 

The objective of this blog is to provide administrators with supplementary upgrade information when upgrading VCF to version 5.2.x, when vSphere Supervisor is enabled. You must refer to the the official documentation of upgrading VCF –  Upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation to 5.2.x, to plan your upgrades. 

Flexible BOM Upgrade

The recommendations below make use of a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) capability available beginning with version 5.2: the SDDC Manager introduces the Flexible BOM Upgrade feature in the upgrade planner. This functionality allows administrators to select specific target versions for each VCF component during upgrades. For instance, in VCF 5.2.1, while vCenter 8.0 Update 3c is included in the Software Bill of Materials (BOM), the Flexible BOM Upgrade option provides the flexibility to choose from a list of supported vCenter versions for upgrading. For more details, refer to the documentation on Flexible BOM Upgrade in VMware Cloud Foundation.

Planning your Target VCF Version

To plan our upgrade path, we’ll work backwards from our desired target version. We focus our example on the latest versions available at the time of writing, including  VCF 5.2.1.1  and vCenter 8.0 Update 3d.

Target	Description
Target VCF 5.2.1 vCenter 8.0U3d  (recommended)	VCF 5.2.1 – Release notes vCenter included in the BOM – 8.0U3c  Recommended to upgrade to vCenter 8.0U3d using Flexible BOM upgrade option Support Supervisor Kubernetes Version in 8.0U3d (1.27, 1.28, 1.29)

To upgrade to this version, we must:

1. Meet the requirements for upgrading to VCF 5.2.1 and vCenter 8.0 Update 3d.
2. Be on an overlapping Supervisor Kubernetes version: v1.27-v1.29.
3. Ensure all Kubernetes clusters are using vSphere Kubernetes releases compatible with the destination version: v1.25-v1.30.

For example, the standard BOM for VCF 5.2.0 meets these requirements, but not the standard BOM for VCF 5.1.0 (as it includes vCenter 8.0 Update 2a, which does not meet requirement #2) or VCF 4.5.2 (as it includes 7.0 Update 3m, which does not meet requirements #2 or #3).

Recommended Upgrade Path from 4.5.2

Alternate vCenter Versions

The recommended upgrade path above begins with the standard BOM for VCF 4.5.2. Your path may be slightly different, for example if you have already used the Async Patch tool to move to a different vCenter version. 

The image below lists all current vCenter versions between vCenter 7.0 Update 3 to vCenter 8.0 Update 3d. If you are on a different vCenter version, please use the image below to move forward to a recommended vCenter from wherever you are. The versions highlighted are the recommended upgrade paths.

For example, if you are instead using 7.0 Update 3n, you would first move to 7.0 Update 3p (the details of Step 1 would be slightly different, but you would “merge” into the recommended path above at Step 2), or if you are using 7.0 Update 3t you would first move to 7.0 Update 3u (the details of Step 2 would be slightly different, but you would “merge” into the recommended path above at Step 3).

Warnings:

• If upgrading to 8.0 Update 2a, prepare by following Knowledge base article 
  
• If upgrading to 8.0 Update 2e in an environment without egress connectivity from Supervisor control plane nodes (including airgapped environments), contact support before beginning the upgrade. 
  
• System Initiated Rolling Updates will occur in various cases. See documentation and release notes for more information. 
  
• If you have Tanzu Application Platform installed on your legacy clusters, please review the following KB Article before upgrading to non-legacy clusters. 

Important Resources

•  Upgrading VMware Cloud Foundation to 5.2.x
  
• Flexible BOM Upgrade in VMware Cloud Foundation
  
• ​​Async Patch Tool