The VCF 9 upgrade guide | Part 2 – Aria vs CMP

Read part 1 | Read part 3

Aria in VCF 9: Same upgrade effort, a very different outcome.

For VMware Aria customers, moving to VCF 9 isn’t a simple upgrade. Aria Operations becomes VCF Operations, Aria Automation becomes VCF Automation, and the transition requires significant integration rework, validation, and replatforming of the automation layer.

That creates an important decision point: if you’re already putting in the work to replatform, do you want to go deeper into the VMware ecosystem or use that effort to create more infrastructure flexibility?

This solution brief examines what the Aria-to-VCF transition actually requires and compares that path with adopting CloudBolt CMP as a vendor-agnostic control plane. See how the two approaches differ in migration strategy, infrastructure choice, integrations, and long-term dependence on a single vendor.

Download the guide to learn:

• What happens to Aria Operations and Aria Automation in VCF 9
• Why the transition to VCF Automation is a replatforming project, not a routine upgrade
• The eight phases required to move from Aria Automation to VCF Automation
• How CloudBolt’s brownfield, crawl-walk-run approach differs from a sequential replatform
• How a vendor-agnostic control plane can support VMware alongside Nutanix, OpenShift, Proxmox, and public cloud
• How to evaluate alternatives without committing to an immediate VMware exit
• Why the VCF 9 transition is an opportunity to rethink your long-term automation strategy

Your team is going to invest engineering time in the transition either way. This guide can help you decide whether that investment should deepen your dependency on the VMware ecosystem or give you more options for whatever comes next.