When you decide on a life cycle management approach for the ESXi software in a VI workload domain in VMware Cloud Foundation, you consider the effort and time required for preparing the environment and performing the patch, upgrade, or update operation.
Life cycle management of ESXi is the process of performing patch updates or upgrades to the underlying ESXi operating system. In a typical ESXi environment, you perform life cycle management by using vSphere Lifecycle Manager that is running in VMware vCenter Server®. When implementing a solution with VMware Cloud Foundation, you use SDDC Manager for life cycle management where additional components are included as part of the life cycle management process.
To update and upgrade the ESXi hosts in the VI workload domain, SDDC Manager uses baseline and baseline groups or images in vSphere Lifecycle Manager. You select the life cycle management method only at domain creation.
Design Component |
vSphere Lifecycle Manager Baselines and Baseline Groups (formerly known as vSphere Update Manager) |
vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images |
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Topology Supportability |
All topologies of VI workload domains are supported. |
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Hardware Supportability |
ESXi upgrade for all hardware listed in VMware Compatibility Guid is supported. |
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Usability |
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Portability |
You cannot export baselines and distribute them across vCenter Server instances. |
You can export an image and use it to manage other clusters in the same or in a different vCenter Server instances. |
Manageability |
You can upgrade ESXi hosts with native or custom ESXi images. Upgrading firmware drivers of ESXi hosts is not supported. Baselines and baseline groups list the updates you apply to the hosts but the ESXi image on the hosts might change after remediation. |
You can update and upgrade ESXi hosts and hardware firmware drivers with a single combined image. Images define the precise image to be applied to the hosts after remediation. No deviation from the defined image is possible after remediation. vSphere Lifecycle Manager does not allow solutions to push VIBs to the hosts. |
Cost |
Upgrading ESXi version and hardware firmware with a single combined image is not supported. |
You can upgrade ESXi version and hardware firmware with a single combined image by using a vendor plug-in called Hardware Support Manager (HSM). Such a plug-in usually requires an additional license. |
Decision ID |
Design Decision |
Design Justification |
Design Implication |
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VCF-WLD-ESX-LCM-001 |
Use SDDC Manager to perform the life cycle management of ESXi hosts in the VI workload domain cluster. |
SDDC Manager has a greater awareness of the full SDDC solution and therefore handles the patch update or upgrade of the VI workload domain as a single process. Directly performing life cycle management tasks on an ESXi host or through vCenter Server has the potential to cause issues within SDDC Manager. |
The operations team must understand and be aware of the impact of performing a patch or upgrade by using SDDC Manager. |