An administrator is preparing to upgrade their VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) management domain from VCF...

When upgrading fromVCF 5.0 to VCF 9.0, the upgrade workflow requires that theSDDC Manager be upgraded firstbefore any other component bundles (vCenter, ESX, NSX) become visible. This is explicitly stated in the VMware Cloud Foundation upgrade process:the upgrade bundles for the management domain components are dependent on the SDDC Manager version. The online depot will not present the 9.0 upgrade bundles for vCenter, ESX, or NSX until the SDDC Manager itself has reached the target major version (in this case, 9.0).

This is because SDDC Manager contains the updatedLifecycle Management (LCM)engine and updatedbundle manifests, which are required to understand, download, and orchestrate the remaining component upgrades. Attempting to download the other bundles without upgrading SDDC Manager first is not supported.

Options B and D (download tools) are incorrect because the issue isnot that the bundles are missing from the depot, but that SDDC Manager 5.x cannot interpret 9.0 component bundles. Option C (upgrade to 5.2 first) is also incorrect because the VCF 5.x → 9.x upgrade path is directly managed by the upgrade planner once SDDC Manager is upgraded.

Thus, the correct resolution is toupgrade the SDDC Manager to 9.0, after which the remaining component bundles will become available.