When converging an existing vSphere cluster into a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Fleet, the cluster must already be a functional vSphere environment. According to the VCF 9.0 Convergence Guide, the minimum prerequisites for convergence include:
A deployed and operational vCenter Server managing the cluster.
ESXi (VMware ESX) hosts installed and joined to that vCenter cluster.
The documentation states:
“The vSphere environment to be converged must consist of ESXi hosts managed by a supported vCenter Server instance.”
NSX (C) is not required before convergence because NSX is deployed and configured as part of the VCF bring-up or workload domain conversion process.
VCF Operations (D) is not a prerequisite for cluster convergence.
vSAN (E) is optional because VCF supports multiple principal storage types (vSAN, VMFS, NFS).
Therefore, the required components that must exist prior to convergence are VMware ESX hosts and VMware vCenter Server.