VCF-9 Upgrade

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 has been available for six months now. As a lot of dependency blocks have started to disappear and more customers are initiating strategic discussions regarding the upgrade and adoption of the VCF 9 platform.

During these conversations we have noticed a few common misconceptions regarding the upgrade path. This blog post explores the core of VCF 9 and outlines the journey toward a successful implementation.

What is VCF 9?

VCF 9 represents the evolution of the VCF platform that VMware has had for years now. Shifting toward a fundamentally different approach: it is a comprehensive, all-in-one solution. Rather than a collection of disjointed products, VCF 9 integrates key components into a single Secure Private Cloud Platform.

VCF 9 consists of the following core pillars:

• vSphere

• NSX

• VCF Operations

• VCF Automation

• vSAN

• VCF Installer

This integration allows customers to elevate their existing vSphere VM-centric solution to a truly modern application platform capable of running VMs, containers and AI workloads seamlessly.

Beyond the core VCF platform, VMware also offers a portfolio of advanced services to cover key use cases like disaster recovery, ransomware protection, advanced security (including cybersecurity measures for malware and ransomware), load balancing, application services, data services (such as database-as-a-service).

Upgrade paths to VCF 9

So, with the core platform explained, the biggest questions we get is “how do we upgrade?”. Well, based on your current environment, requirements and future needs, we have three options:

The first option is deploying a fully customized new VCF deployment from scratch that is tailored to your needs. This allows you to import existing workloads into the new environment.

The second option is the focus of this blog, describing all requirements and possible upgrade paths.

First, let’s tackle a few of the questions we receive:

I need to deploy the full stack of VCF to continue with “vSphere 9”:

It is not necessary to fully deploy the entire VCF suite to continue with vSphere 9. The only required component, at the time of writing, is VCF Operations. This is the centralized management component that is also in charge of license distribution. Before the actual upgrade we will start with a workshop to present the full VCF 9 platform and discuss all components.

I have VCF licenses, do I need to implement the full stack:

A lot of customers have bought a multi-year VCF contract with yearly payment, but this does not mean a full VCF stack needs to be implemented, see also the first question above. In reality we assist customers into their upgrade to v8 and build a roadmap afterwards to work to the v9 version by October 2027, when v8 goes EOL.

I need to fully onboard and utilize NSX with VCF 9:

VCF 9 utilizes NSX as a core part for the networking of the entire solution. Of course, customers can deploy VCF 9 with a mandatory single / standalone NSX manager without ever utilizing the NSX capabilities. This is perfectly supported and feasible. In our roadmap we will recommend customers to also adopt NSX networking to be able to utilize VKS, VPCs and NVIDIA Private AI.

I need to have vSAN to run VCF, and 3 Tier storage is not supported:

3 tier solutions (based on NFS or FC) are also qualified as primary and supplementary storage. This means that the VCF management domain can use 3 tier storage without any issues.

We need to remark that not only vSAN offers a better TCO but is also a key component to truly build a flexible, scalable, secure Private Cloud platform.

Limitations

There are a few specific limitations today but they are expected to be resolved in the release of VCF 9.1 (expected Q2 2026).

Dell VxRail: Currently an RPQ is required to upgrade to VCF 9. Reach out for more information.

vCloud Director: Currently no direct upgrade path yet for customers running vCloud Director. There is a migration path to VCF Automation, but there is not 100% feature parity yet.

 Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop: There is no official support yet for vSphere 9 / VCF 9

Possible in-place upgrade paths

Existing customers running vSphere 8, also have the option to import the following components with the new VCF 9 deployment. Except for your vCenter and ESX servers, all other components can be deployed from scratch, if wanted.

As you can see, there is nothing stopping you from upgrading towards VCF9. But how does an upgrade actually work?

We typically start with 1 or multiple design workshops, where we define business requirements and define design decisions for all relevant components. An example of a customer currently running on vSphere 8. The upgrade path will be following:

1. Define the necessary services that will be deployed and additional configuration input for the VCF deployment

2. Upgrade the existing components that will be imported within the VCF deployment. In our example is this the vCenter server and ESXi nodes. This is the same procedure as upgrading from vSphere 7 to 8.

3. Deploy the VCF installer appliance and start the VCF deployment workflow.

4. Grab a coffee and wait until the fully automated deployment is completed.

5. Start utilizing your newly upgraded VCF Private Cloud Platform.

Did you know that we have the highest number of Belgian Broadcom VCF Knights at UNIT-D?Broadcom Knights are the pinnacle of certification within Broadcom for a specific domain.
One of our Broadcom Knight, Maarten Van Driessen, has written a blog about VCF 9; link.

Reach out to us if you would like to have a chat about VCF9 and the upgrade possibilities for your environment.