Life Cycle Management Design of vCenter Server for the Management Domain

Life cycle management of vCenter Server includes the process of performing patch updates or upgrades to the vCenter Server appliance. Always consider the impact of such an operation on the management solutions that are connected to the management domain vCenter Server in VMware Cloud Foundation.

You use SDDC Manager for life cycle management of the management vCenter Server and other management components that form the VMware Cloud Foundation instance.

Table 1. Design Decisions on Life Cycle Management of the Management Domain vCenter Server

Decision ID	Design Decision	Design Justification	Design Implication
VCF-MGMT-VCS-LCM-001	Use SDDC Manager to perform the life cycle management of the appliance for the management domain vCenter Server.	Because the deployment scope of SDDC Manager covers the full VMware Cloud Foundation stack, SDDC Manager performs patching, update, or upgrade of the management domain as a single process.	The operations team must understand and be aware of the impact of a patch, update, or upgrade operation by using SDDC Manager.