vSphere Lifecycle Management in Cloud Foundation
Cloud Foundation supports the use of two (2) different vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) options when patching and upgrading ESXi.
A vLCM Baseline can be used with any x86 based HCI server with components which are listed in the VMware HCL. The Management domain is configured from Bring-up to use a vLCM Baseline.
Using a vSphere Lifecycle Manager Desired State Image provides a fully lifecycle managed solution to both the underlying server hardware and Cloud Foundation components.
Cloud Foundation supports the use of two (2) different vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) options when patching and upgrading ESXi.
The vLCM option is selected at the time of deploying a workload domain and is the method used to upgrade/patch ESXi and vSAN. All clusters within a given workload domain inherit the vLCM option chosen at the time of deploying the first cluster to the domain.
vSphere Lifecycle Manager Baselines is formerly known as VMware Update Manager (VUM).
-vLCM Baselines can be used with any x86 based HCI server with components which are listed in the VMware HCL.
Using vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images is a full vLCM solution which manages both the underlying server hardware and ESXi components (including vSAN) at a cluster-level. Clusters within a workload domain can each be configured with a different vLCM desired state image.
Notes:
•vLCM baselines and vLCM images are used in the update and patching of the ESXi hypervisor (only). Other Cloud Foundation components such as NSX use a different process.
•2 node workload domains/clusters configured with NFS, FC or vVols as principal storage can be configured only using vLCM images.
•Workload domains configured using NFS, FC, vVols as principal storage of 3 or more hosts can be configured using either vLCM images or vLCM Baselines.
•Workload Domains within a VCF 5.0 deployment can be created using a vLCM baseline however this capability will be deprecated in a future release. The recommended approach is to configure all new workload domains using a vLCM desired state image. Existing workload domains which have been configured using a vLCM baseline can be switched by setting up a new image or importing an existing image within vCenter server. Refer to the VMware vSphere product Documentation for detailed steps.
•Using a vLCM baseline was previously referred to as using a VMware Update Manager (VUM) image.
Resources:
Further detail on vSphere LCM is covered in the vSphere Product Documentation – vSphere Lifecycle Manager Baselines and Images
For more information about creating a cluster that uses a single vLCM image, see the VMware Cloud Foundation Lifecycle Management documentation.
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