You can use a vSphere Lifecycle Manager image to manage a cluster if the cluster only contains solutions integrated to work with vSphere Lifecycle Manager. If an unitegrated solution is enabled on a cluster, you cannot use vSphere Lifecycle Manager images to manage that cluster, but you can still use baselines and baseline groups.

A solution is a VMware product that integrates with vCenter Server and adds some new functionality to the ESXi hosts in the inventory.

When you enable a solution for a cluster that uses a vSphere Lifecycle Manager image, the solution automatically uploads an offline bundle with components into the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot and adds its component to all hosts in the cluster. You cannot control the lifecycle of solution components. For example, if you export the image, solution components are not part of the exported image.

Integrated Solutions

You can manage a cluster with a single image if the cluster has any of the following solutions enabled.

  • vSphere High Availability
  • vSAN

    For more information about the integration between vSAN and vSphere Lifecycle Manager, see vSAN Clusters and vSphere Lifecycle Manager and the Administering VMware vSAN documentation.

  • vSAN File Services
  • vSphere with Tanzu

    For detailed information about the integration between vSphere with Tanzu and vSphere Lifecycle Manager, see the vSphere with Tanzu Configuration and Management documentation.

  • VMware NSX-T Data Center™

    For more information about the integration between VMware NSX-T Data Center™ and vSphere Lifecycle Manager, see the NSX-T Data Center Administration documentation.

  • VMware Cloud Foundation

    vSphere Lifecycle Manager is available as an option in the VMware Cloud Foundation Workload Domain. For more information, see the VMware Cloud Foundation Lifecycle Management documentation.

You can also use baselines for clusters that have those solutions enabled.

Unintegrated Solutions

You cannot manage a cluster with a single image if the cluster has any of the following solutions enabled.
  • VMware NSX® Data Center for vSphere®
  • VMware vSphere Replication
  • Dell EMC VxRail

You can use baselines and baseline groups to manage clusters that have those solutions enabled.