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Side-loading VCF binaries into VCF Installer & SDDC Manager for Air-Gapped Environments 

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The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Installer (Day 0) and SDDC Manager (Day N) supports two common methods for downloading VCF software into a users environment.

  1. Connect to Broadcom's online depot (supports network proxy) and directly download the software into VCF Installer/SDDC Manager, which I will describe as Online Depot with/Automated Transfer
  2. Mirror Broadcom's online portal and create an offline depot used by VCF Installer/SDDC Manager to download the software, which I will describe as Offline Depot with/Automated Transfer

To help illustrate the two options, I have create the following visual:


Option 1: VCF Installer/SDDC Manager connects directly to Broadcom.com to download VCF software

Option 2: VCF Download Tool (VCFDT) is used to connect to Broadcom.com and download a mirror copy of the online depot and then transfer that to an offline depot (web server) that is then used by VCF Installer/SDDC Manager

Option 2 is the preferred choice by most organizations as it only requires a single online download of the VCF software and then it can be efficiently hosted and replicated within their datacenter(s). Many organizations also have an established process in distributing other IT/Enterprise software (Windows updates/patches, Linux updates/patches, etc), which are typically hosted on an internal web server and Option 2 simply adheres to their existing operating model.

In the off chance, your organization does not have to distribute other IT/Enterprise software or the ability to request or setup a web server, VCF Installer/SDDC Manager actually supports a 3rd option which I will describe as Local Depot w/Manual Transfer

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How many VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Instances can a VCF Fleet support?

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With the release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0, a new architectural construct has been introduced called a VCF Fleet. This brings centralized fleet management and provides modern workload consumption across multiple VCF instances, all managed through a single deployment of VCF Automation and VCF Operations, as shown in the diagram below.


A common question that has been coming up quite a bit lately is how many VCF Instances can a VCF Fleet support?

Technically, there is not a fixed number of  VCF Instances that can be managed by VCF Operations. As with with most things in our industry, the answer is "it depends" ...

Before we take a closer look at what "it depends" actually means, it is important to understand what is a VCF Instance?


A VCF Instance includes a VCF Management Domain and can include one or more VCF Workload Domains.

  • VCF Management Domain includes the core SDDC components: vCenter Server, ESXi hosts, vSAN or other supported principal storage and NSX Manager) along with single instance of SDDC Manager and a VCF Operations collector.
    • SDDC Manager provides lifecycle management for all deployed core SDDC components within a VCF Instance
    • VCF Operations Collector provides inventory and metric collection within a VCF Instances, which is then sent to VCF Operations
  • VCF Workload Domain, when deployed only includes the core SDDC components and all lifecycle management and operations is performed by the single instance of SDDC Manager

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Quick Tip: Workaround for NSX Edge Upgrade to VCF 9.0.1 running AMD Ryzen CPUs

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If you are planning to upgrade to latest release of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 and you are using an AMD Ryzen (consumer) processor, you will need to apply an additional workaround after your NSX Edges have been upgraded, for proper functionality. This is similar to the workaround that I had shared back in 2020, which is needed when deploying a new VCF 9.x environment due to the incompatibility of NSX Edges running on an AMD Ryzen CPU.

After the NSX Edge node has been upgraded, the modifications to the original system files are not persisted and we need to re-apply the changes before the NSX Edge nodes will run properly.

Thanks to Tomas Fojta for sharing this tidbit while upgrading his environment, which happens to run on an AMD Ryzen system.

Step 1 - SSH to the NSX Edge node as root

Step 2 - Edit /os_bak/opt/vmware/nsx-edge/bin/config.py and comment out L192-193 containing the AMD section and that will allow the NSX Edge to properly startup and complete the upgrade flow.