Staging is the process during which vSphere Lifecycle Manager downloads patches and extensions on the ESXi hosts. During staging, the patches and extensions are not installed on the host. Staging reduces the time that the host spends in maintenance mode during remediation.

To stage patches or extensions to hosts, first attach a patch or extension baseline or a baseline group containing patches and extensions to the host. Staging patches and extensions does not require that hosts enter maintenance mode.

With the vSphere Client, you can stage a single baseline, multiple baselines, or baseline groups to a single host or a group of hosts in a container object.

Some limitations exist depending on the compliance status of the patches or extensions that you want to stage.

Patches cannot be staged if they are obsoleted by other patches in the baselines or baseline groups for the same stage operation. vSphere Lifecycle Manager stages only the patches that it can install in a subsequent remediation process, based on the current compliance status of the host. If a patch is obsoleted by patches in the same selected patch set, the obsoleted patch is not staged.

If a patch is in conflict with the patches in the vSphere Lifecycle Manager depot and is not in conflict with a host, after a compliance check, vSphere Lifecycle Manager reports this patch as a conflicting one. You can still stage the patch to the host and after the stage operation, vSphere Lifecycle Manager reports this patch as staged.

During the stage operation, vSphere Lifecycle Manager performs pre-scan and post-scan operations and updates the compliance status of the baseline.

For more information about the different compliance statuses that an update might have, see Compliance Statuses of Updates.

After you stage patches or extensions to hosts, you must remediate the hosts against all staged patches or extensions.

After remediation finishes, the host deletes all staged patches or extensions from its cache regardless of whether they were applied during the remediation. The compliance status of the patches or extensions that were staged but not applied to the hosts reverts from Staged to its previous value.

Important: Staging patches and extensions is supported for hosts that are running ESXi 6.7 and later. You can stage patches to PXE booted ESXi hosts, but if the host is restarted before remediation, the staged patches are lost and you must stage them again.

Prerequisites

  • Attach a patch or extension baseline or a baseline group containing patches and extensions to the host.
  • Required privileges: VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager.Manage Patches and Upgrades.Stage Patches and Extensions.

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 pane, select one or more baselines.
  4. Click Stage.
    The Stage Patches dialog box opens.
  5. Select hosts on which to stage patches and extensions.
    The number of selected hosts is on the top of the list.
  6. To view the patches or extensions that will download to the selected hosts, expand the Stage list.
  7. Click Stage.

Results

The staging operation starts. You can monitor the progress of the task in the Recent Tasks pane.

What to do next

Remediate the host or hosts.

After remediation, all staged patches and extensions, whether installed or not during the remediation, are deleted from the host.