With the introduction of VMware Cloud Foundation 9, managing multiple VCF instances across a VCF Fleet has become significantly more streamlined.

Part of day-two operations often involves aligning your infrastructure with evolving organizational standards. Fortunately, VCF 9 makes renaming an underlying VCF instance non-disruptive and straightforward.

In this scenario, we’re changing an initial instance named “Provider” to align with its geographic location, “San Francisco.”


Step 1: Update VCF Operations

1. Login to VCF Operations and navigate to Administration -> Integrations
2. Expand VMware Cloud Foundation to see your connected instances.
3. Locate the instance you wish to rename – in our case, Provider
(Disregard the warning on New York, it’s a lab after all!)

4. In the Account details view, you will see the current Name and Physical Data Center set to “Provider.”


5. Enter the new Name.

6. If required, choose a new Physical Data Center location from the dropdown.
Note: If you need to define a new physical location first, you can do so under Administration > Control Panel > Physical Data Centers.


7. Once a new name and optionally a new physical data center has been entered, go ahead and hit Save.

Step 2: Update the SDDC Manager Database

Important Disclaimer: Direct modification of the SDDC Manager database is an advanced operation. In a production environment, this is not supported unless you are explicitly engaged with Broadcom Support.

Always ensure you have a valid backup of SDDC Manager before proceeding.

1. SSH into SDDC Manager with user vcf and su to root.

vcf@sfo-vcf01 [ ~ ]$ su
Password:


2. Verify the current instance name. Note that this value is not present in the SDDC Manager UI.

root@sfo-vcf01 [ /home/vcf ]# psql -h localhost -U postgres -d platform -c “select vcf_instance_name from system_info;”

vcf_instance_name
—————–
Provider


3. Update the instance name

root@sfo-vcf01 [ /home/vcf ]# psql -h localhost -U postgres -d platform -c “update system_info set vcf_instance_name=’San Francisco’;”

UPDATE 1


4. Verify the name change

root@sfo-vcf01 [ /home/vcf ]# psql -h localhost -U postgres -d platform -c “select vcf_instance_name from system_info;”

vcf_instance_name
—————–
San Francisco


5. Restart services on SDDC Manager

root@sfo-vcf01 [ /home/vcf ]# /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

You are about to restart all SDDC Manager services. Are you sure you would like to continue [y/n]? y

Restarting all SDDC Manager services. This would take a while.
——————————————————-

Restarting common services…
Restarting domain manager…
Restarting lcm…
Restarting operations manager…
Restarting sddc-manager-ui-app…
Finished initiating restart for all SDDC Manager services.

Fleet Management doesn’t reflect the name change

Note that VCF Operations -> Fleet Management -> Lifecycle will still display the initial name. I have raised this internally with engineering, and significant changes are coming to Fleet Management in VCF 9.1 so this won’t be addressed in VCF 9.0.x.