Infrastructure Automation: Enforcing the VCF 9 Upgrade Order with an Orchestrator Gate

VCF 9 upgrades fail less because the software is “fragile” and more because the environment didn’t follow a compatible component order. Broadcom has documented a clear update sequence for VCF 9.0 components, and it’s easy to turn that guidance into a repeatable precheck gate.

Source KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/390634/update-sequence-for-vcf-90-and-compatibl.html

The narrow use case

Before starting any lifecycle work (SDDC Manager, NSX, vCenter, ESXi, vSAN), run a workflow that validates your intended order and blocks out-of-sequence actions.

Orchestrator action: Upgrade Order Gate (PASS/FAIL)

Goal: prevent a change window from proceeding when the requested target component is out-of-order for your fleet.

Workflow steps (VMware Aria Orchestrator)

• Create a workflow: 'VCF9 - Upgrade Order Gate'
• Inputs: changePlan (string or JSON), targetComponent (string), targetVersion (string)
• Step 1: Parse changePlan and normalize component names (SDDC Manager, NSX Manager, vCenter Server, ESXi, vSAN, VCF Operations, VCF Automation).
• Step 2: Validate the requested targetComponent appears after its prerequisites based on the KB sequence (management plane first, then core SDDC components in order).
• Step 3: On FAIL, return a reason like: 'Blocked: vCenter upgrade requested before NSX upgrade'.
• Step 4: On PASS, emit a simple approval token (string) for downstream workflows.

Action steps

1. Build the Orchestrator workflow and expose it as a single button action for change owners.
2. Call the gate at the start of every upgrade pipeline (pre-maintenance mode / pre-NSX precheck / pre-vCenter staging).
3. Store PASS/FAIL output in a change record (ticket, email, or log) so every upgrade has auditable rationale.