VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2 and later support an offline depot that you can connect to from multiple instances of SDDC Manager. Use the Bundle Transfer Utility to download and transfer bundles to the offline depot and then any SDDC Manager connected to the offline depot can access the bundles.

You can use the Bundle Transfer Utility to download upgrade bundles and async patch bundles to the offline depot.

Prerequisites

  • Set up an offline depot.
  • The offline depot must have:
    • The latest version of the Bundle Transfer Utility. You can download it from the Broadcom Support portal.
    • Internet connectivity (either directly or through a proxy) for downloading the bundles and other required files.
    • Configure TCP keepalive in your SSH client to prevent socket connection timeouts when using the Bundle Transfer Utility for long-running operations.
  • Connect SDDC Manager to the offline depot. See Connect SDDC Manager to a Software Depot for Downloading Bundles.
    Note: You can also connect SDDC Manager to the offline depot after you download bundles to the offline depot.

Procedure

  1. On the computer hosting offline depot, run the following command to download the bundles required to upgrade VMware Cloud Foundation. 
    ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --setUpOfflineDepot downloadPartnerBundle -sv vcf-source-version --offlineDepotRootDir offline-depot-root-dir --offlineDepotUrl url:port --depotUser user-name --depotUserPasswordFile path-to-password-file --partnerDepotUser user-name --partnerDepotUserPasswordFile path-to-password-file
    For example: 
    ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --setUpOfflineDepot downloadPartnerBundle -sv 5.0.0.0 --offlineDepotRootDir /var/www --offlineDepotUrl https://10.123.456.78:8282 --depotUser [email protected] --depotUserPasswordFile ../vmw-depot --partnerDepotUser [email protected] --partnerDepotUserPasswordFile ../partner-depot
  2. Run the following command to download async patch bundles to the offline depot: 
    ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --setUpOfflineDepot --asyncPatches -offlineDepotRootDir offline-depot-root-dir --offlineDepotUrl url:port --depotUser user-name --depotUserPasswordFile path-to-password-file
    For example: 
    ./lcm-bundle-transfer-util --setUpOfflineDepot --asyncPatches -offlineDepotRootDir /var/www --offlineDepotUrl https://10.123.456.78:8282 --depotUser [email protected] --depotUserPasswordFile ../vmw-depot

What to do next

After the bundles are available in the offline depot, you can use the SDDC Manager UI to apply the bundles to workload domains. Multiple instances of SDDC Manager UI can connect to the same offline depot.