Retrieving VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version from vCenter Server?

Have you ever worked on something before and several years later, you have totally forgotten about it!? That is exactly the story behind this recent question on finding the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) version by using vCenter Server.

Obviously, the most logical place to look for the version of VCF is by using SDDC Manager which can be found within the VCF Workload Domain UI as shown in the screenshot below:

You can also get the VCF version by using the VCF API which can easily be retrieved with PowerVCF (PowerShell Module for VCF) using the Get-VCFManager function.

It was only after answering the question did I realized that you CAN also retrieve the VCF version by using vCenter Server and not only that, this method of retrieval was a solution that I had proposed and was implemented back in 2017!

In fact, I was able to locate my original document with the proposed solution and I can not believe that I had forgotten about this ... I mean it's only been 7 years 😅

There are several vCenter Server advanced settings which are added by SDDC Manager when either a VCF Management or Workload Domain is created and one of the properties contains the version of VCF that is managing that vCenter Server as you can see from the screenshot by navigating to the vCenter Server inventory object and selecting Configuration->Advanced Settings.

• SDDC.Deployed.Type - VCF or VCF-VxRAIL
• SDDC.Deployed.Flavor - Standard, Consolidated or Service-Provider
• SDDC.Deployed.Version - e.g. 5.1.1.0
• SDDC.Deployed.Method - Automation
• SDDC.Deployed.WorkloadDomain - Management or VirtualInfrastructure
• SDDC.Deployed.InstanceId - Unique UUID generated by Cloud Builder or SDDC Manager

You can also retrieve these and other vCenter Server advanced settings using the vSphere API and here are two PowerCLI snippets that can help:

(Get-View $global:DefaultVIServer.ExtensionData.Content.Setting).Setting | where {$_.key -match "config.SDDC"}

or

Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity ($global:DefaultVIServer) | where {$_.Name -match "config.SDDC"}