VCF 9 introduced Fleet Management (part of VCF Operations) as the control plane for deploying and lifecycling the fleet. It’s new, and it has sharp edges — this series collects the deployment guide plus the real problems I’ve hit running it: services that don’t survive a reboot, password sync breaking after credential expiry, and leftover components that need scripted cleanup.
For the SDDC Manager side of VCF upgrades, see the VCF Upgrades series.
In VCF 9.1, Fleet Password Management accounts can get stuck in EXPIRED status, and the password workflows changed compared to 9.0. In 9.0, you may have seen UI actions such as Disconnected or Remediate. In the 9.1 environment I was working on, those actions were not available. The UI exposed Update, and the Fleet Password Management API provides the same kind of workflow: query password accounts, then update or rotate the password. ...
If you’ve been working with VCF Operations 9.1, you may have noticed that on the Build > Lifecycle > VCF Management > Components page, manually-added components such as VCF Operations for Networks, Log Management, Real-Time Metrics or VCF Automation no longer have a “Delete” option available in the UI. In VCF Operations 9.0, this was possible on the Fleet Management > Lifecycle > Components page by clicking the three vertical dots next to a component and selecting Delete. That option is gone in 9.1. ...
Deploying the VCF Fleet Management (Operations / Fleet Manager) appliance using an OVA is a common approach when standing up a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9 environment or re-deploying the component. Below is a refined guide covering the deployment, configuration, and integration steps. 1. Prerequisites & Downloading Binaries Before you deploy the OVA: Log into the Broadcom Support Portal and obtain the required binaries and OVA files for the Fleet Manager. Direct link can be found here. ...
Upgrading your VCF Fleet Management from version 9.0.0 to 9.0.1 is a relatively modest patch update, but careful execution ensures minimal disruption. Below is a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process safely. Download the Patch Download the patch by going to Fleet Management -> Binary Management -> Patch Binaries -> Select fleet management -> Download. ...
When upgrading the VCF Operations Fleet Management appliance to 9.0.1, you might hit a reboot surprise: vPostgres fails to start, and the fleet-management certificate is regenerated. You’ll see journal errors like: pg_ctl: could not open PID file "/var/vmware/vpostgres/current/pgdata/postmaster.pid": Permission denied systemd[1]: vpostgres.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE Broadcom’s KB confirms the symptoms and provides the manual steps to fix permissions on the Postgres data dir and to normalize the regenerated cert/key filenames, followed by service restarts. If you are also moving the analytics side to the same release, I covered upgrading VCF Operations to 9.0.1 using a .PAK file separately. ...