Depending on their content, vSphere Lifecycle Manager baselines can be upgrade, patch, and extension baselines. You use those types of baselines to check the compliance state of target inventory objects and to remediate the non-compliant objects.
Upgrade Baselines
Host upgrade baselines define the version to which you upgrade the hosts in your environment. With vSphere Lifecycle Manager 7.0, you can upgrade ESXi hosts from version 6.5 and 6.7 to ESXi 7.0. Host upgrades to ESXi 5.x, ESXi 6.5, or ESXi 6.7 are not supported.
To create an upgrade baseline, you must first import an ESXi ISO image to the vCenter Server inventory.
Patch Baselines
Patch baselines define a number of patches that must be applied to a given host. Patch baselines can be either dynamic or fixed.
| Baseline | Description |
|---|---|
| Dynamic Patch Baseline | You specify the criteria for patch inclusion in the baseline. Only the patches that meet the criteria are included in the baseline. As the set of available patches in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot changes, dynamic baselines are updated as well. You can manually include or exclude patches from the baseline. |
| Fixed Patch Baseline | You manually select the patches from the total set of patches available in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot. |
Extension Baselines
Extensions baselines contain additional software modules for ESXi hosts, for example device drivers. This additional software might be VMware software or third-party software. You can install additional modules by using extension baselines, and update the installed modules by using patch baselines.
Extensions are installed on the hosts that do not yet have such software, and patched on the hosts that already have the software installed. All third-party software for ESXi hosts is classified as host extension, although extensions are not restricted to just third-party software.
