vSphere Lifecycle Manager scans objects to determine how they comply with the baselines and baseline groups that you attach to those objects. You can view compliance information about a single ESXi host or a group of hosts in a container object.

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

The host or the container object must have an attached baseline or baseline group to be examined for compliance information. Compliance with baselines and baseline groups is assessed at the time of viewing.

The overall compliance status of an ESXi hosts depends on the compliance statuses of all baselines and baseline groups that are attached to the object. For information about the different compliance statuses that an object, a baseline or a baseline group might have, see Compliance Statuses of ESXi Hosts, Baselines, and Baseline Groups.

The compliance status of a baseline depends on the compliance statuses of all updates in the baseline. For information about the compliance statuses that updates might have, see Compliance Statuses of Updates.

The ability to view the compliance status of vSphere objects depends on the privileges that you have. To view the compliance status of an inventory object, you must have the View Compliance Status privilege. Users that have privileges to remediate against patches, extensions, and upgrades and to stage patches and extensions on a particular inventory object, can view the compliance status of the same object even if they do not have the View Compliance Status privilege.
  • Users with the privilege to view a container, but not all the contents of the container, can view the aggregate compliance status of all objects in the container.
  • If a user does not have the permission to view an object, its contents, or a particular virtual machine, the results of those scans are not displayed.

For more information about managing users, groups, roles, and permissions, see the vSphere Security documentation.

For a list of all vSphere Lifecycle Manager privileges and their descriptions, see vSphere Lifecycle Manager Privileges For Using Baselines.

For information about checking the compliance of hosts against an image, see Check Cluster Compliance Against an Image.