The VCF 9.0 Upgrade Guide specifies required components when converting from a vSphere- only deployment to full VCF. The must-deploy services include:
VCF Operations fleet management - central monitoring of multiple instances.
VCF Operations - core operational monitoring platform.
VCF Operations Collector - required for data ingestion from vSphere, NSX, and vSAN.
The Identity Broker is already embedded with VCF 9.0 SSO, while VCF Operations for Logs and Networks are optional add-ons for extended visibility.

When placing a vSAN host into maintenance mode, choosing "Ensure Accessibility" ensures that all data remains accessible during the maintenance operation. It moves data off the host only if necessary, prioritizing accessibility while minimizing downtime. This option is designed to minimize the time required to complete the operation compared to "Full Data Migration."

The Istio integration in VCF 9.0 defines two main logical groupings for organizing workloads within a service mesh: Cluster groups and Service groups. The documentation notes: "Cluster groups allow you to organize and manage objects across different Kubernetes clusters. Service groups let you aggregate and manage services that share common policies, routing rules, or observability requirements." .
These groups enable administrators to apply consistent service mesh policies across multiple deployments and clusters. They also simplify administration by centralizing traffic management, routing, and observability of workloads. Security, API, and Node are not Istio-specific grouping constructs but instead are other concepts used elsewhere (e.g., security policies, API endpoints, node objects in Kubernetes). Therefore, the correct group types used in Istio Service Mesh are Cluster and Service groups.

Cloud Builder deploys the SDDC Manager, which is responsible for managing and automating the VMware Cloud Foundation environment.
Cloud Builder deploys the NSX Edge cluster as part of the network configuration during the bring-up process.
Cloud Builder also deploys the vCenter and NSX Manager clusters to ensure proper management and network virtualization for the VMware Cloud Foundation environment.

Organizations for All Applications provide a unified model for managing both VM and Kubernetes workloads. They support third-party integrations such as Tanzu Salt and Active Directory, and enable deployments to Native Public Cloud endpoints.