How Do You Manage Host Profile Policies and Policy Components

In the vSphere Client, you can view and edit host profiles policies, policy options, and parameters. You can change policy names or policy descriptions. If you do not want a host profile component to be considered during a compliance check, you can deactivate that specific component.

How Do You Edit a vSphere Host Profile?

Learn how to view and change the host profile policy names and descriptions, how to mark specific configurations as favorite, and how to search for a specific configuration value.

Procedure

In the vSphere Client, select Menu > Policies and Profiles.
Under Policies and Profiles, click Host Profiles.
Select the host profile that you want to edit and click the Configure tab.
Click Edit Host Profile.
(Optional) To change the profile name and description, click the Name and description tab.
To view or edit a particular policy or settings, expand the category in the Edit host profile page.

Note: See How Do You Edit a vSphere Host Profile Policy? for detailed instructions for editing a Host Profile policy. See How Do You Deactivate a Host Profile Component or Subprofile? for detailed instructions on enabling or disabling a policy from compliance check or remediation.
View All host profile configurations or only Favorites configurations.
You can mark a configuration as a favorite with the star icon. The configurations are then added to Favorites configurations.
(Optional) In the search field, filter the configuration names and values you want to view.
For example, enter SNMP. All configurations that relate to SNMP are displayed.
(Optional) Customize the hosts.
Make any changes to the available configuration values for this profile and click Save.

Note: The host customization settings page only appears if you changed any settings that require host customizations.

Results

The changes are complete when the "Update Host Profile" task is completed in the Recent Tasks pane. If you attempt to remediate the profile before the task is complete, the profile configuration does not contain the change.

How Do You Edit a vSphere Host Profile Policy?

A host profile policy describes how a specific configuration setting is applied. You can edit policies belonging to a specific host profile.

To see the sub-profile components that comprise the host profile, you can expand the host profile's configuration hierarchy when you edit the host profile. These components are categorized by functional group or resource class to make it easier to find a particular parameter. Each subprofile component contains one or more attributes and parameters, with the policies and compliance checks.

Each policy consists of one or more options that contain one or more parameters. Each parameter consists of a key and a value. The value can be one of a few basic types, for example, integer, string, string array, or integer array.

Note: Currently, there is no way to remove or replace policy options, policies, or sub-profiles that are deprecated in this release. To allow old host profiles to continue working, metadata is added to the deprecated policies. New host profiles are extracted with only non-deprecated parts of a host profile.

Table 1. Subset of Host Profile Subprofile Configurations
Component Categories	Configuration Settings	Notes and Examples
Advanced Configuration Settings	Advanced Options, Agent VM, DirectPath I/O, Hosts file, Power System, System Image Cache.	Host profiles do not check advanced settings if they are the same as the default settings. vCenter Server copies only the advanced configuration settings that have changed and that differ from the default values. In addition, compliance checks are limited to the settings that are copied. Host profiles do not support the configuration of PCI devices for virtual machine passthrough on the ESXi host.
General System Settings	Console, Core Dump, Device Alias, Host Cache, Kernel Module, Management Agent, System Resource Pool, System Swap, vFlash Host Swap Cache, CIM-XML Indication Subscriptions.	For date and time configuration: For the time zone, enter a UTC string. For example, "America/Los_Angeles" for United States Pacific time zone. The default time zone is set to the local time and location of the vSphere Client machine. Configure the Network Time Protocol (NTP) correctly. You can configure the NTP settings on the host Configure tab. Click Time Configuration (under System). To configure the time settings, click Edit. Note: Enter the host cache size as а whole GB in MB. For example, 1024MB.
Networking	vSwitch, Port groups, Physical NIC speed, security and NIC teaming policies, vSphere Distributed Switch, and vSphere Distributed Switch uplink port.	When DHCPv6 is enabled in the networking subprofile, manually turn on the corresponding rule set in the firewall subprofile.
Security	Firewall, Security Settings, Service.
Storage	Configure storage options, including Native Multi-Pathing (NMP), Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA), iSCSI adapters, and NFS storage.	Use the vSphere CLI to configure or modify the NMP and PSA policies on a reference host, and then extract the Host Profile from that host. If you use the Profile Editor to edit the policies, to avoid compliance failures, make sure that you understand interrelationships between the NMP and PSA policies and the consequences of changing individual policies. For information about the NMP and PSA, see the vSphere Storage documentation. Add the rules that change device attributes before extracting the Host Profile from the reference host. After attaching a host to the Host Profile, if you edit the profile and change the device attributes (for example, mask device paths or adding SATP rules to mark the device as SSD) you are prompted to reboot the host to make the changes. However, after rebooting, compliance failures occur because the attributes changed. Because Host Profiles extract device attributes before rebooting, if any changes occur after the reboot, it evaluates and finds those changes, and reports it as noncompliant. To configure or modify the SatpDeviceProfile policy after extracting the host profile, use the vSphere Client. For compliance purposes, the policy option strings must be in the following format: For an ALUA supported array, for example, SATP_ALUA, the policy options must be separated by a semicolon (;). For example: `implicit_support=<on/off>; explicit_support=<on/off>; action_onRetryErrors=<on/off>` For an ALUA supported array with CX, for example, SATP_ALUA_CX, the policy options must be separated by a semicolon (;). For example: `navireg=<on/off>; implicit_support=<on/off>; action_onRetryErrors=<on/off>` For a CX array, for example, SATP_CX or SATP_INV, the policy options must be separated by a space. For example: `navireg=<on/off> ipfilter=<on/off> action_onRetryErrors=<on/off>` Note: The policy configuration options that are marked with `off` are not present in the configuration string.

Other profile configuration categories include: user group, authentication, kernel module, DCUI keyboard, host cache settings, SFCB, resource pools, login banner, SNMP agent, power system, and CIM indication subscriptions.

Procedure

In the vSphere Client, select Menu > Policies and Profiles.
Under Policies and Profiles, click Host Profiles.
Select the host profile that you want to edit and click the Configure tab.
Click Edit Host Profile.
Expand a subprofile until you reach the policy to edit.
Select the policy.
The policy options and parameters appear on the right side of the Edit Host Profile dialog box.
Edit the policy options or parameters.

How Do You Deactivate a Host Profile Component or Subprofile?

You can decide whether a host profile component or a subprofile is applied or considered during a compliance check. This action allows administrators to eliminate non-critical attributes from consideration during the compliance check or ignore values that, while part of the host profile, are likely to vary between hosts.

Procedure

In the vSphere Client, select Menu > Policies and Profiles.
Under Policies and Profiles, click Host Profiles.
Select the host profile that you want to edit and click the Configure tab.
Click Edit Host Profile.
Expand the Host Profile Component hierarchy until you reach the desired component or component element.
Deselect the check box next to a component.
The check box is selected by default. If you deselect the check box, the other subprofiles that are enabled are still applied and selected.

Results

During a host profile compliance check or host remediation, the component or component element is not considered.

Note: Sometimes, deselecting the check box might remove the component or component element from the host. This action is displayed in the task list after the pre-check remediation.