VCF on VxRail: Customer Preparation Guide For Upgrades

As your partner in IT, Dell has created this Upgrade Preparation Guide to help guide Dell customers through a successful upgrade of your equipment. While this guide points out known concerns related to the upgrade, which can potentially disrupt your environment. 

Delivering the VCF on VxRail updates requires close collaboration between Dell and VMWare/Broadcom.

If engaging Dell to perform a VCF on VxRail upgrade, follow Dell KB https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000201464/dell-vcf-on-vxrail-collect-configuration-information-for-upgrade-schedulingand collect the required information to allow quicker scheduling of the upgrade activity.

As mentioned by the Dell Scheduling Team, there are two options with this guide:

1. Review this guide ahead of your scheduled Upgrade Pre-Check and prepare any questions for discussion with the Dell Upgrade Engineer after the pre-check. The Upgrade Engineer completes the review of the pre-check results and determines the upgrade plan.
2. Review this guide independently and ensure that your environment is protected against these known concerns.

In preparation for your upcoming upgrade event, note the following items:

• Schedule your upgrade for a time outside of your peak I/O load, as performance degradation may occur during the migration of VMs while individual nodes/hosts are being upgraded.
• Do not run any domain operations while an update is in progress. Example: Creating a new VI domain, adding hosts to a cluster or adding a cluster to a workload domain, and removing clusters/hosts from a workload domain.
• Do not run any password rotations or certificate rotation operations or vRealize workflows like deployment, expansion, or associations.
• Ensure that there are no failed workflows in your environment and there are resources are in an activating or error state. If any of these conditions are true, contact Dell VxRail Support Team before starting the upgrade.
• Since VMs are vMotioned as part of the upgrade, ensure that VMs of the related MGMT or WLD Domains can be vMotioned in advance. Examples of issues that may prevent vMotion:
  • VM with an ISO mounted
  • VM with external storage locally mounted
  • VM pinned to a host
• Verify that all third-party software is compatible with the target VCF version by reviewing the relevant BOM on the VMware/Broadcom site and the VCF on VxRail Support Matrix .

Note: Broadcom have introduced Download Verification for multiple product including VCF. Downloads will be authorized through a unique token. The new URLs are embedded with the token to verify that you, as an authorized user/party, are the one downloading the file. You should refer to the VMware Blog posting here https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudprovider/2025/03/new-vmware-software-download-guidelines-key-changes-broadcom-partners-should-know.html and KBs VCF authenticated downloads configuration update instructions & Authenticated Download Configuration Update Script.

Latest Codes:
VCF 5.2.2 on VxRail 8.0.361 (Released September 2025)
VCF 4.5.2 on VxRail 7.0.550 (Released June 2025) *

* VxRail version can be updated using Async Patch Tool (APT).

Async Patch Tool (AP Tool):

• The Async Patch Tool is a utility allows users to apply critical patches to certain VCF components outside of VCF BOM releases. The Asynch Patch Tool also allows customers to enable upgrades from an async patched system to a new version of VCF on VxRail.
• The Asynch Patch Tool is supported with VMware VCF 4.2.1 and later. The release also supports ESXi and VxRail Manager patching of the VCF on VxRail.
• Customers can use the Async Patch Tool to patch their environments without engaging Dell or VMware teams.
• See Broadcom KB Applying individual product updates to VMware Cloud Foundation environments using Async Patch Tool (AP Tool) for more information about the Asynch Patch Tool.

Customer Jump-Box Requirements:
Ensure the jump-box meets the following requirements:

• 250 GB free disk space
• Use a VM, preferably on the same management network as SDDC, to avoid firewall ports being blocked.
• Zoom session initiated directly from the jump-box VM to avoid latency over VPN.
• Fast Internet connection.
• You should have the following software installed:
  • Putty Client (or equivalent)
  • WinSCP
  • Zoom/WebEx
• Jump-box VM or physical machine should have full admin privileges to avoid permission errors.

Passwords needed:

• Ensure that you have the below passwords before the upgrade and TC to enable checks on SDDC and VxRail components:

• See VxRail: Best Practices for VxRail Account and Passwordsfor more information about the password instructions.
• Follow the how-to "Procedure" in Solve-online to reset any of the passwords.
• Open an SR with Dell Support before the TC activity to reset any passwords.

If SDDC Manager is not connected with the Internet:

• A manual Code transfer would be required.
• The desktop or jump machine must have Java 8 or higher installed on it.
• If a Proxy Server is in use, have the details available.

When upgrading to 8.x/7.x/4.7.x/4.5.x or higher versions make sure of the below:

• If the password of vCenter user administrator@vsphere.local contains the below special characters, the Linux shell cannot handle these characters properly and causes script failures.
• Change the administrator VCSA password before the upgrade if it contains any of the special characters. See Dell KB article 81763: VxRail: VxRM health-check fails for test 'vc_pw_char' for further details.

 
Note: The '!' character (ascii 33), works correctly as the last character, but in any other position, it can cause the script to fail.

License Keys:
VMware license keys are required for major code upgrades (Out of Family) for example VCF 4.x to VCF 5.x.

• See Broadcom KB Upgrade and Downgrade VMware License Keys via the Broadcom support portal for information about upgrading your license keys after a VxRail upgrade.
• See Broadcom KB Managing licenses on ESXi hosts using the vSphere Client for assistance in applying for licenses.

Customers are responsible for obtaining and updating license keys.


Out-of-Scope Components
VCF on VxRail upgrades follow the VCF BOM for each release, see the VCF on VxRail Release Notes for details on each release.

The following components are out of scope for Dell to upgrade:

• vRealize LifeCycle Manager (vRSLCM) and all subcomponents are out of scope.
• Tanzu/Kubernetes
• Horizon

Customers Actions:

• vRealize Software Upgrades in 4.x family

Note, vRealize Suite Version 8.6.2 (including vRSLCM) are the customer's responsibility. If support is needed, raise a Broadcom ticket to engage the vRealize team for assistance with these software components.

Note: The vRealize software must be upgraded at step 2 of the VCF upgrade and Dell cannot move forward until this is completed.

• Ensure all Service VMs have File-Based Backups configured?

VMware recommends using File-Based or Image-Based backup prior to an upgrade activity to allow a change to be reverted.
Customers should review the "VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail Administration Guide" and the section on 'Backing Up and Restoring SDDC Manager'.
Navigate to the below page and select the version applicable to your current VCF on VxRail version. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/4.1/com.vmware.vcf.vxrail.admin.doc/GUID-A5029B3C-F47C-43D1-BA12-AC3ADAE2B765.html
Dell Upgrade Engineers take cold snapshots in cases where there is no File-based backup solution in place.
 

• Do you have NSX setup in a Cross-vCenter (Cross-Site) NSX-Federation?

If so, customers must see the following article as both VCF Instances must be upgraded together in a specific sequence. This also impacts the scheduling of the upgrade as both VCF Instances must be coordinated as per the VMware document below.
https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-NSX-Data-Center-for-vSphere/6.4/com.vmware.nsx.upgrade.doc/GUID-D824C743-8137-47F8-AF5
 

• Are NSX backups configured and do you have a recent NSX backup?

Ensure that NSX backups are configured and regular backups are made for the NSX configuration. https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Cloud-Foundation/4.2/vcf-admin/GUID-E6C56382-1F5D-447E-A295-99684E378854.html
 

• Do you have NSX Intelligence installed?

If so, the recommendation is to delete the intelligence appliance prior to the upgrade and then post upgrade deploy NAPP for intelligence functionality. These are handled by VMware Professional Services and are not within the Dell scope.

• Are you using a third-party Backup Software Program? 

Note that backup software can stress the vSAN, which can cause vCenter to generate alerts during a VCF upgrade which can cause the SDDC component upgrade to fail. Sometimes, we must wait until the backups are completed before resuming the upgrade.
 

• Customer with Tanzu installed in their environment 

On the VMware Cloud Foundation environment with a vSphere with Tanzu deployed, the vCenter Server upgrade is blocked. Tanzu Upgrades are a customer's responsibility. Reach out to your VMware account team if you need a professional service to complete the upgrade for you. This is a paid service. Please see VMware KB VMware Cloud Foundation Upgrade Dependency on vSphere with Tanzu for more information.
 

• Customers are required to check additional software outside the VCF stack for compatibility.

When undertaking any upgrade software compatibility must be checked. Customers must verify the software compatibility with any additional software outside the VCF stack for compatibility with the target vCenter, ESXi, and NSX versions. 

For more information regarding the upgrade preparation guides for other products, log in to your Dell support account and view: RPS Upgrade Preparation Guides