You use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to check the status of virtual machines before you upgrade them. The status check shows if the virtual machine is up-to-date or can be upgraded.

With vSphere Lifecycle Manager, you can check the status of a single virtual machine or a group of virtual machines in a parent container object.

Supported groups of virtual machines or ESXi hosts include virtual infrastructure container objects such as folders, vApps, clusters, and data centers.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager checks the status of virtual machines in two aspects.
  • You can use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to check the status of the virtual machines in respect with the VMware Tools version that they have installed.

    The status check is performed against the latest VMware Tools version that the parent host supports.

  • vSphere Lifecycle Manager checks the status of the virtual machines in respect with their VM hardware compatibility.

    vSphere Lifecycle Manager compares the hardware compatibility of the virtual machines with the default VM hardware compatibility configured for the host.