One of the biggest advantages of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 is its flexibility and broad support for existing customer environments, meeting customers where they are at in their Private Cloud journey. From existing standalone vSphere deployments with VCF Operations to environments with different combinations of vSAN, NSX and Aria Automation, all the way to a full stack VCF deployment.

With this added flexibility in VCF 9.1, depending on the components and features deployed within an environment, customers may need to account for specific component upgrade sequences, additional operational workflows and resource requirements, which can make understanding the overall upgrade workflow a real challenge. Historically, customers would have to piece together information from product documentation, KB articles and interoperability matrices before they could confidently plan and perform an upgrade.

To help improve the upgrade experience for our customers, why not simply start with where they are currently at based on the products and features they already have deployed, rather than requiring them to understand all the different deployment permutations and upgrade workflows? Using that as input, we can then provide the applicable destination scenarios they can upgrade to and, most importantly, generate a tailored upgrade plan specific to their environment.

Today, we are excited to announce the release of the VCF 9.1 Upgrade Planning Tool which provides a custom tailored upgrade planning experience to help customers confidently navigate their VCF upgrade journey.

After specifying your current deployment which can either be a vSphere or VCF-based environment along with the specific versions you are running, users will then be presented with a set of applicable designations that they can then choose from.

Once the destination has been selected, the VCF Upgrade Planning Tool will provide a comprehensive upgrade plan that includes:

• Overall upgrade workflow that is also broken down into discreet upgrade phases to help with maintenance window planning
• Resource & Networking Requirements
• Key considerations and potential pitfalls to avoid
• Relevant references to VCF product documentation

While the VCF Upgrade Planning Tool can be used interactively, users can also export the entire upgrade workflow and/or specific upgrade phases to PDF for offline use.

We hope this tool will provide you with a better VCF upgrade experience and if you have any feedback, issues or areas for improvement, feel free to file Github Issue or even contribute back!

Editorial Note: all or parts of this content originally published on my blog here.