This topic explains how floating stemcells work in VMware Tanzu Operations Manager, and how they affect your Tanzu Operations Manager product tile upgrades.
Benefits of floating stemcells
Floating stemcells have the following benefits:
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Tanzu Operations Manager can quickly propagate a patched stemcell to all virtual machines in the deployment when a vulnerability is discovered.
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You can do certain deployment-wide updates, such as CVEs, by uploading a new stemcell instead of uploading
.pivotalfiles for each tile, which reduces the time spent waiting for files to upload.
Stemcell major and minor upgrade limitations
Floating stemcells allow upgrade to the minor versions of stemcells but not the major versions.
For example, a stemcell can float from 1234.56 to 1234.99 but not from 1234.991 to 1235.0.
Product tile upgrades
When you upgrade a product tile, Tanzu Operations Manager completes the following steps:
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Tanzu Operations Manager checks to see whether a new minor, or patch, version of the stemcell exists.
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If a minor stemcell is available from the current major line, Tanzu Operations Manager installs the upgraded tile and all compatible product tiles in the deployment on the new stemcell.
Uploading and managing stemcells
You can upload new stemcells to your product tiles by using the Tanzu Operations Manager API or by using the Stemcell Library in the Tanzu Operations Manager Installation Dashboard. For more information about the Stemcell Library, see Importing and Managing Stemcells.
