Upgrade Prerequisites

Ensure that the following prerequisites are met before starting an upgrade.

• You have taken a backup of the SDDC Manager appliance using an external SFTP server. See the Backup and Restore of VMware Cloud Foundation section in the VMware Cloud Foundation Administration Guide.
• You have a backup or snapshot of relevant management VMs in the management domain.
• Before you upgrade a vCenter Server, take a file-based backup. See Manually Back Up vCenter Server.
• There are no domain operations in progress. Domain operations include creating VI workload domains, expanding a workload domain (adding a cluster or host), and shrinking a workload domain (removing a cluster or host).
• You have downloaded the relevant bundles. See Downloading Bundles.
  Note: If you downloaded the bundles manually, you must download all bundles for the target release and upload them to the SDDC Manager appliance before starting the upgrade.
• If you applied an async patch to your current VMware Cloud Foundation instance you must use the Async Patch Tool to upgrade to a later version of VMware Cloud Foundation. For example, if you applied an async vCenter Server patch to a VMware Cloud Foundation 4.3.1 instance, you must use the Async Patch Tool to upgrade to VMware Cloud Foundation 4.4. See Async Patch Tool.
• There are no failed workflows in your system and none of the VMware Cloud Foundation resources are in activating or error state.
  Caution: If any of these conditions are true, contact VMware Support before starting the upgrade.
• Passwords for all VMware Cloud Foundation components are valid.
• For upgrade prerequisites for vRealize Suite products, navigate to the component you are upgrading from Upgrade vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager and vRealize Suite Products.
• Increase the CPU, memory, and storage as per the system requirements of vRealize Automation 8.4. For more information, see the Hardware Requirements of vRealize Automation 8.4 Reference Architecture.