Remediation makes the remediated ESXi host compliant with the attached baselines and baseline groups. You can remediate a host against a single or multiple baselines, or against a baseline group. Baseline groups might contain multiple patch and extension baselines, or an upgrade baseline combined with multiple patch and extension baselines. You can remediate ESXi hosts against a single attached upgrade baseline at a time.

You can upgrade all hosts in your vSphere inventory by using a single upgrade baseline that contains an ESXi image. You can remediate a single ESXi host or a group of ESXi hosts in a container object, such as a folder, a cluster, or a data center. You can also initiate remediation at a vCenter Server level.

Note: Because the official VMware online depot hosts certified partner content in addition to VMware content, a broader set of OEM bulletins are available in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot. As a result, a broader set of OEM bulletins are included in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager predefined bulletins. During remediation, always inspect the contents of those baselines to exclude the bulletins that you do not need in the baseline. For the bulletins that you do need, consult the corresponding KB articles for information about deployment specifics and dependencies. Verify that dependent bulletins are also included in the baselines that you use for remediation.

Prerequisites

  • Required privileges: VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager.Manage Patches and Upgrades.Remediate to Apply Patches, Extensions, and Upgrades.
  • Attach a patch, upgrade, or extension baseline or a baseline group containing patches, upgrades, and extensions to the host.
  • Resolve any issues that occur during Remediation Pre-check.
  • In upgrade scenarios, verify that the ESXi hosts to upgrade have a boot disk of at least 4 GB. When booting from a local disk, SAN or iSCSI LUN, up to 128 GB of disk space is used to create ESXi system partitions. You can create a VMFS datastore on a boot disk larger than 128 GB.
  • To enable Quick Boot, verify that the ESXi host is compatible with the feature. For more information, see Quick Boot.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, navigate to the vSphere Lifecycle Manager compliance view for an individual host or a container object.
    1. Navigate to a host, cluster, or a container object.
    2. Click the Updates tab.
  2. Select Hosts > Baselines.
  3. In the Attached Baselines and Baseline Groups pane, select the baselines and baseline groups to use for remediation.
    You can select a single baseline or baseline group. You can also select multiple baselines and baseline groups. Your selection must contain no more than one upgrade baseline.
  4. Click Remediate.
    If the selected baselines and baseline groups do not contain an upgrade image, the Remediate dialog box opens.

    If the selected baselines and baseline groups contain an upgrade image, the End User License Agreement dialog box opens.

  5. To proceed to remediation, accept the terms and the license agreement in the End User License Agreement dialog box.
    After you accept the agreement and click OK to close the dialog box, the Remediate dialog box opens.
  6. Expand the list of pre-check issues and review the actions that vSphere Lifecycle Manager must perform to ensure successful remediation.
  7. (Optional) To generate a full remediation pre-check report, click Show Full Remediation Pre-Check Report.
    If you select this option, the Remediate dialog box closes and vSphere Lifecycle Manager does not proceed with the remediation process. Instead, the Remediation Pre-Check dialog box opens. After you review the results from the remediation pre-check, you must initiate remediation again.
  8. Expand the list of hosts to be remediated and deselect any host that you do not want to remediate.
    The list contains all the hosts to which the selected baselines and baseline groups are attached. Even if you navigated to a single host before initiating remediation, the list might still display multiple hosts to be remediated. All hosts in the list are selected by default. Deselecting hosts from the list changes the overall number of hosts to be remediated.
  9. (Optional) To view information about the updates that will be installed during the remediation, expand the list of updates.
    If the selection of baselines and baseline groups contains an upgrade baseline, information about the ESXi image is also displayed.
  10. (Optional) To schedule the remediation task for a later time, expand Scheduling Options and configure a scheduled remediation task.
    By default, the remediation task starts immediately after closing the Remediate dialog box.
  11. Expand Remediation settings and review and edit the remediation settings.
    • To turn on or turn off Quick Boot, select or deselect the respective check box in the Remediation settings table.
    • To allow or disallow health checks after remediation, select or deselect the respective check box in the Remediation settings table.
    • To ignore warnings about unsupported hardware devices, select the respective check box in the Remediation settings table.
    • To configure parallel remediation for the selected hosts, expand Parallel remediation, select the respective check box and configure the maximum number of concurrent remediations.
      Note: vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediates in parallel only the ESXi hosts that are in maintenance mode. Hosts that are not in maintenance mode are not remediated. If you do not set the maximum number of concurrent remediations, vSphere Lifecycle Manager remediates all hosts that are in maintenance mode.

      If the hosts have NSX virtual distributed switches that are ready to be migrated to vSphere Distributed Switches, you must set the maximum number of parallel remediations to no more than 4. In cases when host switch migration is needed, if more than 4 hosts are remediated in parallel, the remediation might fail, because the host switch migration takes more time than the time vSphere Lifecycle Manager needs to complete the parallel remediation.

    • To change any other of the remediation settings, click the Close Dialog And Go To Settings link above the table.

      If you select this option, the Remediate dialog box closes and vSphere Lifecycle Manager does not proceed with the remediation process. Instead, you are redirected to the Baselines Remediation Settings pane on the Settings tab of the vSphere Lifecycle Manager home view. To change any of the remediation settings, click the Edit button. Remediation does not resume automatically. After you make the desired changes, you must initiate remediation again.

  12. Click Remediate.

Results

Depending on the remediation schedule you configure, the remediation task starts immediately or runs later.