Upgrading

On July 13, 2026 Broadcom shipped the next VCF 9.1 patch wave, and this post walks through the part of it that lives under Build -> Lifecycle -> VCF Management -> Upgrade: the VCF Management services. The headline releases on this surface are VCF Operations 9.1.0.0400 and VCF Automation 9.1.0.0200, mostly security enhancements plus a batch of fixes. This post is the follow-up to my 9.1.0.0300 walkthrough. To be clear on scope: this post covers only the management services. SDDC Manager 9.1.0.0400 and the core components — vCenter, NSX, ESX, vSAN — go through the VCF Instances flow and are not covered here; see the short section at the end. ...

The 9.1.0.0300 patch went through this lab without drama at the beginning of July. Three weeks later, the 9.1.0.0400 express patch for VCF Operations hit the same single-node appliance and stopped dead at Installing PAK file — no progress, no error, and a reboot later, still nothing. What followed was a proper archaeology dig through every layer of state the upgrade machinery keeps, and almost every layer turned out to be holding a different version of the truth. ...

The 9.1.0.0300 patch train for VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 is applied through a few different lifecycle views. In my lab, the update covered the Fleet Lifecycle component, VCF Operations, SDDC Lifecycle, and SDDC Manager. Before starting, review the official Broadcom release notes: SDDC Manager 9.1.0.0300 Release Notes VCF Operations 9.1.0.0300 Release Notes Broadcom describes these patch releases as time-sensitive fixes that can be applied between major, minor, and maintenance releases. That also means every component may not move at the same time, so check what is actually offered in your environment instead of assuming the whole VCF bill of materials changes together. ...

If you’re moving vCenter Server from 8.0 U3x to 9.1.0.0 — typically as part of a VCF 9.1 deployment or a VVF 9.1 upgrade — the run can fail partway through with: Error attempting Upgrade Database Schema Please check vcintegrity migration logs for details. This is one of those failures that looks scary in the UI but has a clean, well-understood root cause: a handful of orphaned rows in the vcIntegrity database that trip a new foreign-key constraint introduced in 9.1. Below is the whole story — what the error means, how to read the logs, why it happens, and how to clear it so the upgrade completes. It’s the same shape of problem I wrote about in fixing PostgreSQL on Fleet Management 9.0.1: a schema change colliding with pre-existing data. ...

As a solutions architect managing a VCF 9 Operations instance, one of the first things I tune after initial deployment is the capacity engine. Out of the box, VCF Operations uses an exponential decay model that heavily weights the most recent data points. That is great for catching sudden spikes, but it can misrepresent your true capacity posture if your environment has cyclical workloads — think month-end batch jobs, quarterly reporting bursts, or seasonal traffic patterns. ...

If you spend enough time building out VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) in a lab, Proof of Concept, or nested environment, you will eventually hit “The Wall.” You know the hardware works. You know the ESXi versions will play nicely together. But SDDC Manager’s automated guardrails, the strict Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) checks and VVS (VMware Validated Solutions) interoperability validations throw up a red flag and stop your deployment or upgrade dead in its tracks. ...

Upgrading your SDDC Manager from version 9.0 to 9.0.1 is a relatively straightforward process when done through the integrated Lifecycle interface. Below is a guide to go over this patch upgrade. 1. Navigate to the Update Section Log into Operations → Fleet Management. Under Lifecycle → VCF Instances, select the VCF instance you want to upgrade. Look for the available update section. If you see SDDC Manager Update 9.0.1, click the Download icon. If no update appears, double-check your depot configuration and ensure your binary repositories are correctly set up. ...

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. ...

When a vSphere admin places an ESXi host in vCenter maintenance mode, VCF Operations should automatically suppress host alerts for that object, without pausing metric collection, and then restore alerting when maintenance ends. Why this approach? In VCF 9, you can avoid alert noise during maintenance in two ways: Maintenance Schedules – pause both collection and alerts during a defined window (best for planned maintenance). Policy-based alert suppression (this post) – keep metrics flowing but disable host alert definitions while the host is in maintenance. This is done with a policy attached to a dynamic custom group keyed to the host’s Maintenance Mode property. Note on naming: In VCF 9, VCF Operations is the successor to Aria/vRealize Operations and is part of the unified Cloud Foundation experience. If you’re upgrading from Aria Operations, see Broadcom’s “Upgrade to VCF Operations 9.0.” ...