Deployment requirements for converging vCenter server instances to VCF management domains with VMFS datastores

08/18/2026 Contributors

Review the requirements for converging a vSphere cluster with NetApp ONTAP VMFS datastores to a VMware Cloud Foundation management domain.

Infrastructure requirements

Make sure the following components and configurations are in place.

NetApp ASA R2/ASA/AFF storage system with a storage virtual machine (SVM) configured to allow FC/iSCSI traffic.
Logical interface (LIF) created to carry FC/iSCSI traffic and associated with the SVM.
For FC and NVMe/FC, FC zoning configured on the fabric switches.
For iSCSI and NVMe/TCP, the vmkernel port group configured on the vSphere hosts to carry the respective traffic.
A supported vSphere cluster with 4 x vSphere hosts and a vCenter appliance colocated on the cluster.
Distributed port group configured for vMotion on the VLANs or network segments established for this purpose.
Downloaded VCF Installer tool required for the VCF convergence. For additional details, refer VCF Deployment, Convergence, and Upgrade.
Prerequisites for ONTAP tools are met.

For complete information on prerequisites for ONTAP tools refer to Prerequisites for ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere deployment.

ONTAP tools for VMware vSphere 10 can be installed in either HA or non-HA configurations.

For supported storage and other considerations for converging vSphere to VCF, refer to Supported and Not Supported Configurations to Converge to VCF.
For information on configuring ONTAP storage systems, refer to the ONTAP 9 documentation.
For information on configuring VCF, refer to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 documentation.

After you've reviewed the deployment requirements, deploy ONTAP tools and provision the VMFS datastore.