You can skip hosts while applying an ESXi update to the management domain or a VI workload domain. The skipped hosts are not updated.

Note:
You cannot skip hosts that are part of a VI workload domain that is using vSphere Lifecycle Manager images, since these hosts are updated at the cluster-level and not the host-level.

Procedure

  1. Using SSH, log in to the SDDC Manager appliance with the user name vcf and password you specified in the deployment parameter sheet.
  2. Type su to switch to the root account.
  3. Retrieve the host IDs for the hosts you want to skip. 
    curl 'https://SDDC_MANAGER_IP/v1/hosts' -i -u 'username:password' -X GET -H 'Accept: application/json' |json_pp
    Replace the SDDC Manager IP address, user name, and password with the information for your environment.
  4. Copy the ids for the hosts you want to skip from the output. For example: 
    ...
         "fqdn" : "esxi-2.vrack.vsphere.local",
         "esxiVersion" : "6.7.0-16075168",
         "hardwareVendor" : "VMware, Inc.",
         "cpu" : {
            "cpuCores" : [
               {
                  "model" : "intel",
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375,
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                "
               },
               {
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375,
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "model" : "intel"
               },
               {
                  "model" : "intel",
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375,
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                "
               },
               {
                  "model" : "intel",
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375
               },
               {
                  "model" : "intel",
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375
               },
               {
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375,
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "model" : "intel"
               },
               {
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375,
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "model" : "intel"
               },
               {
                  "model" : "intel",
                  "manufacturer" : "Intel(R) Xeon(R) Platinum 8260 CPU @ 2.40GHz                                                ",
                  "frequencyMHz" : 2394.375
               }
            ],
            "frequencyMHz" : 19155,
            "usedFrequencyMHz" : 1892,
            "cores" : 8
         },
         "physicalNics" : [
            {
               "deviceName" : "vmnic0",
               "macAddress" : "00:50:56:a1:cf:47"
            },
            {
               "deviceName" : "vmnic1",
               "macAddress" : "00:50:56:a1:8b:71"
            }
         ],
         "bundleRepoDatastore" : "lcm-bundle-repo",
         "hybrid" : false,
         "memory" : {
            "totalCapacityMB" : 79995.421875,
            "usedCapacityMB" : 22571
         },
         "id" : "b318fe37-f9a8-48b6-8815-43aae5131b94",
...
    In this case, the id for esxi-2.vrack.vsphere.local is b318fe37-f9a8-48b6-8815-43aae5131b94.
  5. Open the /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/application-prod.properties file.
  6. At the end of the file, add the following line:
    esx.upgrade.skip.host.ids=hostid1,hostid2
    Replace the host ids with the information from step 4. If you are including multiple host ids, do not add any spaces between them. For example: esx.upgrade.skip.host.ids=60927f26-8910-4dd3-8435-8bb7aef5f659,6c516864-b6de-4537-90e4-c0d711e5befb65c206aa-2561-420e-8c5c-e51b9843f93d
  7. Save and close the file.
  8. Ensure that the ownership of the application-prod.properties file is vcf_lcm:vcf.
  9. Restart the LCM server by typing the following command in the console window:
    systemctl restart lcm

Results

The hosts added to the application-prod.properties are not updated when you update the workload domain.