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VCF Software Depot Structure Deep Dive for Install & Upgrade

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Before deploying a VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 environment, the VCF Installer must download the required VCF software binaries and metadata from either an online or offline depot, which can also support air-gapped environments.

One of the lesser-known enhancements in VCF 9.0 is the re-architecture of the VCF software depot into a new unified depot, which consolidates all VCF component binaries and metadata into a consistent, centralized structure.

While it is not necessary to fully grasp the structure of the new unified VCF Software Depot to deploy VCF, I’ve seen some confusion among users about which software binaries are required, both for the initial VCF Fleet deployment, VCF Fleet post-deployment installations and VCF Fleet upgrades. To help make these concepts concrete as well as help users create their offline depot, I will be sharing the specific VCF Download Tool (VCFDT) commands along with the files that are automatically downloaded for each scenario.

Perquisites:

Note: In my example, I have the following configured:

  1. flt-depot.rainpole.io is the FQDN of my offline depot, which is running on Ubuntu 24.04 (please ensure you are using supported operating system as noted above)
  2. BSP Download Token is stored in a file called /root/token which will be used by VCFDT
  3. Environmental variable is also configured called TOKEN which will also contain the same value of the BSP Download Token which will be used by UMDS
  4. At least 96GB of storage is required for all downloads and will be stored in the /depot directory

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My VCF 9 Lab Mini-Rack

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Over the past few months, I have been documenting my journey in running VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 in a lab environment, deploying a minimal setup while unlocking the full capabilities of the VCF Platform from fleet management, enabling modern workloads to running my own private AI Agents to just name a few!

Like many others, I had to review my physical hardware capabilities across compute, storage, and networking, which ultimately meant a new investment because my 10-year old Supermicro E200-8D could no longer keep up. 😅

For those interested in my VCF 9.0 build-of-materials (BOM), please refer to HERE and HERE for more information.

About a month back, I came across this YouTube video showcasing a super cool build fitting several Minisforums MS-01 (not the latest AMD MS-A2) into a mini-rack (10") form factor from DeskPi.

I really wish I had not seen this video 🤣... but since then, I have been researching and acquiring various parts to build my very own mini-rack for my VCF 9 setup!


Note: The power consumption is ~245w based on my workload usage/deployment.

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Quick Tip - vSphere Supervisor fails to complete due to vSAN Health Check Alerts

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I just re-deployed my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 lab setup this evening, and after configuring configuring VCF Networking with VPC, I proceeded with vSphere Supervisor enablement using VPC. I had exported my previous vSphere Supervisor configuration to JSON, so the enablement should have been a no-op but as it was about to complete, I noticed there was this "Apply Solution" vCenter Server task that just kept failing with the following error message:

A general system error occurred: Health Check for 'esx03.vcf.lab' failed


I was really baffled by the error message and what health check was failing!?! I did know the Apply Solution typically would involve EAM (ESX Agent Manager), but I did not see anything out of the blue and I was in the process of filing an internal bug.

While I was waiting for the support bundles to generate and download, I figured I try searching for the keywords in our internal Google Chat in case someone had ran into error before. While there were few matches, there were no follow-ups or resolution. I was about to give up and then I saw a comment from Maher AlAsfar mentioning that if you use vSAN, make sure to silence all vSAN alerts as that is being checked by vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) as part of its healh check compliance!

Sure enough, I had two vSAN Health Check Alerts!


Once I silenced the vSAN alerts, the Apply Solution task completed immediately, and about a minute later, the vSphere Supervisor enablement also finished.