In my recent webinar with Cecilio Alvarado, Head of VCF Portfolio Services Engineering and Lifecycle Services at Broadcom, I discussed how you can unify your VMware vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation environments by upgrading to VCF 5.2 and importing your existing vSphere clusters.
You can watch the webinar replay at the end of this blog.
Webinar Highlights
The webinar starts by showcasing some of the core capabilities of VCF. VCF is built using workload domains which enable standardized architecture, scaling, and updates. These domains can be scaled, managed, patched, and upgraded independently. SDDC Manager is a key component that provides the automation and workflow functionality in VCF. This includes numerous workflows for deployment, lifecycle management, scaling, and Day 2 operations.
VCF 5.2 includes a new VCF Import Tool that simplifies migrating existing vSphere environments to VCF. We use this tool to move your vSphere environment to VCF, so the first step is to upgrade to VCF 5.2. This process includes downloading the necessary bundles, running pre-checks to identify potential issues, resolving any identified issues, scheduling the update to start during a maintenance window, and monitoring and reviewing the results. A demo of a “skip version” upgrade from version 5.1.0 to version 5.2.1 walks through the process.
After the upgrade is complete, you can import a vSphere instance into the existing VCF infrastructure. Start by running a series of pre-checks to ensure the existing vSphere environment meets VCF requirements and remediate any errors (which is the most time-consuming aspect of the process). Download the VCF Import Tool and the software installer bundle. Update the JSON configuration file to match your environment. Upload the VCF Import tool, software bundle, and JSON configuration file to the SDDC Manager appliance. Then run the import command. The Import Tool will do a final round of checks and then start the import. After the import finishes, the vSphere environment is managed by the VCF instance. Demos of running pre-checks and addressing error messages and performing the import are shown.
Key Takeaways
- VCF streamlines the process of upgrading and managing infrastructure.
- The automated workflows reduce complexity, manual intervention and errors.
- The VCF Import Tool greatly simplifies migrating existing vSphere environments to VCF, saving time and effort.
- Pre-checks are crucial to a successful upgrade or import.
- VCF Professional Services can help with complex remediations and configurations.
On-Demand Replay
If you missed the webinar, you can watch the replay below. The discussion and demo timestamps are provided if you would like to jump directly to specific sections.
00:00 Introductions and Agenda
03:33 VCF 5.2.x overview
12:55 Upgrading to VCF 5.2.1 discussion
16:59 Demo of upgrading VCF version 5.0.0 to version 5.2.1
28:17 Importing vSphere instances to VCF discussion
31:34 Demo of running prechecks and fixing issues
34:23 Preparing and running an import discussion
36:31 Demo of performing an import
41:51 Q&A
Join me on March 19, 2025
If you have an existing vSphere environment that you want to manage like VCF, but you do not have any pre-existing SDDC Manager instances deployed, you can convert the environment to VCF. The ability to deploy a new SDDC Manager instance into an existing vSphere environment and configure it as a VCF management workload domain was introduced in VCF 5.2. This instance will control the vSphere environment in the same way that it does a traditional VCF environment.
In March, Cecilio and I will be hosting a webinar where we will dive into the details of how to convert vSphere to VCF. I will walk through a demo of deploying a new SDDC Manager into an existing vSphere environment and converting the environment to VCF. We will also have a Q&A session at the end where we will provide answers to your specific questions.
Learn more
If you’d like to learn more about moving to VCF 5.2 and how VCF Professional Services can help, check out our other blogs:
