Managing the Life Cycle of Hosts and Clusters
Starting with vSphere 7.0, you can manage the life cycle of ESXi hosts collectively by using the vSphere Lifecycle Manager feature through the vSphere Automation APIs.
You can automate the life cycle management of
a cluster by performing the following operations:
- Retrieve information about the current state of the host or cluster.
- Create a desired state that includes a specific version of the ESXi host. You can also add some compatible partner software and firmware components and add-ons.
- Validate the desired state to detect any discrepancies between the desired state and the host hardware.
- Check the compliance of a cluster against the desired state and determine whether some additional steps must be taken to ensure the success of the cluster remediation.
- Apply the desired state on a cluster.
You can use the vSphere Lifecycle Manager to manage the
life cycle of hosts that meet the following requirements:
- Hosts must be of version 7.0 and later.
- Hosts must be stateful.
- Hosts must include only components that belong to integrated solutions, such as VMware vSAN™ and VMware vSphere® High Availability.