vSphere Lifecycle Manager allows you to manage the firmware lifecycle on ESXi hosts that are part of a cluster that you manage with a single image.

Prerequisites

  • Deploy the vendor-provided hardware support manager and register it as a vCenter Server extension. For more information about deploying and managing a hardware support manager, see the respective OEM documentation.
  • If you use the hardware support manager provided by Dell, create a cluster profile and associate it with the cluster. For more information , review the OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter (OMIVV) documentation.
  • Verify that all hosts in the cluster are from the same vendor.
  • 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 card, click the Edit button.
  4. In the Edit Image card, for the Firmware and Drivers Addon, click Select.
    The Firmware and Drivers Addon dialog box appears.
  5. In the Firmware and Drivers Addon dialog box, select a hardware support manager from the drop-down menu.
    The selected hardware support manager must be from the same hardware vendor as the hosts in the cluster. Otherwise, during a compliance check, the hardware support manager reports the selected firmware and drivers add-on to be incompatible with the host or hosts that are from a different vendor. Firmware remediation fails.
    A list of all available firmware add-ons appears.
  6. Select a firmware add-on from the list.
    An information panel appears on the right. The panel contains information about the supported ESXi versions and whether the selected add-on contains the necessary drivers.
  7. Click Select.
    The selected firmware and drivers add-on is included in the image.
  8. In the Image card, validate and save the image.
    After the image is saved, a compliance check against the new image is triggered for the cluster.
  9. In the Image Compliance card, review the compliance check results for the cluster and for each host.
  10. If any host in the cluster has firmware that is non-compliant with the new image firmware, remediate the respective host or the cluster.
    1. (Optional) In the Image Compliance card, run a remediation pre-check to ensure that remediation finishes successfully.
      • To run a pre-check for all hosts in the cluster, click the Run Pre-check button.
      • To run a pre-check for a single host, click the vertical ellipsis icon for the host and select Run Pre-check.
    2. In the Image Compliance card, initiate remediation.
      • To remediate all hosts in the cluster, click the Remediate All button.

        During cluster remediation, if the remediation of a single host fails, the remediation for the cluster ends prematurely.

      • To remediate a single host, click the vertical ellipsis icon for the host and select Remediate.
    You are not obliged to start remediation immediately after setting up an image for a cluster. However, nothing is installed on the hosts unless you remediate them against the image for the cluster. The firmware on the hosts is actually updated only after successful remediation. You can remediate the objects in your environment at any time that is convenient for you.

Results

The firmware on the hosts in the cluster is updated to the firmware version specified in the firmware add-on for the image.