VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 introduced the concept of a unified VCF Software Depot, which can connect to either Broadcom’s online repository or an offline depot that is hosted within an organizations environment.
By default, an offline VCF Software Depot requires HTTPS with basic authentication. In VCF 9.0, HTTPS can be disabled using this workaround, which remains applicable in VCF 9.1, however, basic authentication is still required.
Note: If you do not or can not setup a basic web server for your VCF Offline Depot, you can use this simple Python script to serve up depot locally from your desktop as long as its accessible by VCF Installer and/or VCF Fleet Depot Service.
With VCF 9.1, both the VCF Installer and the new VCF Fleet Depot Service support an offline Software Depot configured with HTTP and no basic authentication. To take advantage of this capability, you must use the VCF Installer API for the initial VCF Fleet deployment, which automatically applies the same configuration to the Fleet Depot Service.
Note: The VCF 9.1 Installer UI currently does not support connecting to an offline VCF Software Depot using HTTP, the VCF Installer API must be used to apply this configuration.
If you accidentally used the VCF 9.0 workaround, you will need to reapply the HTTP configuration after the VCF Fleet has been deployed using the new VCF Fleet Depot Service API.
