You can customize the remediation settings for a particular cluster while the global remediation settings remain intact and applicable to all other clusters that you manage with vSphere Lifecycle Manager images.

The vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediation settings define how ESXi hosts and virtual machines behave before and during a remediation of a cluster. You configure the vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediation settings in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager home view. The remediation settings are valid for all clusters in the vCenter Server instance where vSphere Lifecycle Manager runs. For more information about how to configure the vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediation settings, see Configure Remediation Settings for vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images.

Additionally, you can modify and override the global remediation settings for a single cluster. The overrides are used during the remediation of that specific cluster. For all other clusters, the global remediation settings apply.

For information about automatically triggered hardware compatibility checks, which is a functionality that is applicable only to vSAN clusters, see Automatically Triggered Hardware Compatibility Checks for vSAN Clusters.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have the proper privileges. See vSphere Lifecycle Manager Privileges For Using Images.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to a cluster that you manage with a single image.
  2. On the Updates tab, select Hosts > Image.
  3. In the Image Compliance card, click the horizontal ellipsis icon and select Edit remediation settings.
  4. In the Edit Remediation Settings dialog box, configure the remediation settings of the target cluster and click Save.
    Option Description
    Quick Boot Quick Boot reduces the host reboot time during remediation. Before you enable Quick Boot, you must make sure that the ESXi host is compatible with the feature.
    VM power state The VM power stateoption lets you control the behavior of the virtual machines that run on the ESXi host.

    You can select from the following options.

    • Do not change power state
    • Suspend to disk
    • Suspend to memory

      To select the Suspend to memory option, you must enable Quick Boot. Otherwise, the Suspend to memory option is dimmed.

      Together with Quick Boot, the Suspend to memory option provides faster host upgrades. vSphere Lifecycle Manager

      Together with Quick Boot, the Suspend to memory option provides faster host upgrades. vSphere Lifecycle Manager suspends to the host memory and not to the disk the powered on virtual machines on the host. After the Quick Boot, the suspended virtual machines are resumed from memory.
    • Power off
    VM migration You can configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager to migrate the suspended and powered off virtual machines from the hosts that must enter maintenance mode to other hosts in the cluster.
    Maintenance mode failures You can configure how vSphere Lifecycle Manager behaves if a host fails to enter maintenance mode before remediation. You can configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager to wait for a specified retry delay period and to retry to put the host into maintenance mode as many times as you indicate in the Number of retries text box.
    HA admission control

    Admission control is a policy that vSphere HA uses to ensure failover capacity within a cluster. If vSphere HA admission control is enabled during remediation, vMotion might be unable to migrate the virtual machines within the cluster.

    Disabling admission control allows a virtual machine to be powered on even if it causes insufficient failover capacity. When this happens, no warnings are presented, and the cluster does not turn red. If a cluster has insufficient failover capacity, vSphere HA can still perform failovers, and uses the VM Restart Priority setting to determine which virtual machines to power on first.
    Note: Disabling HA admission control before you remediate a two-node cluster causes the cluster to practically lose all its high availability guarantees.
    • If you select the Disable HA admission control on the cluster option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediates the hosts in the cluster and re-enables HA admission control after remediation is complete.
    • If you deselect the Disable HA admission control on the cluster option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager skips remediating the clusters on which HA admission control is enabled.
    DPM

    VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM) monitors the resources consumed by the running virtual machines in the cluster. If sufficient excess capacity exists, VMware DPM recommends moving virtual machines to other hosts in the cluster and placing the original host into standby mode to conserve power. If the capacity is insufficient, VMware DPM might recommend returning standby hosts to a powered-on state.

    • If you select the Disable DPM on the cluster option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediates the hosts in the cluster and re-enables DPM after remediation is complete.
    • If you deselect the Disable DPM on the cluster option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager skips remediating the clusters on which DPM is enabled.
    Hardware compatibility issues vSphere Lifecycle Manager performs a hardware compatibility check as part of the remediation pre-check and the remediation tasks for vSAN clusters. You can configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager to prevent remediation when hardware compatibility issues exist for the cluster.
    • If you select the Prevent remediation if hardware compatibility issues are found option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager reports hardware compatibility issues as an error, which prevents remediation.
    • If you deselect the Prevent remediation if hardware compatibility issues are found option, vSphere Lifecycle Manager reports hardware compatibility issues as a warning, which does not prevent remediation.

    If the cluster is not vSAN-enabled, vSphere Lifecycle Manager does not perform a hardware compatibility check as part of the remediation pre-check or the remediation tasks.

Results

These settings become the remediation settings for the selected cluster. vSphere Lifecycle Manager uses those settings for that cluster for all future remediation tasks. The global remediation settings remain unchanged and are applied to all other clusters.

In the Image Compliance card, vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays a message that the global remediation settings are overridden. Also, an option to reset the values appears in the card.