Working with Desired Software States
When you commit a draft software specification, you make the committed draft the desired state for that cluster. If all hosts in the cluster are compliant with the desired state, you can remediate the cluster.
You can use the methods provided with the com.vmware.esx.settings.clusters.Software interface to manage a desired state for a cluster. Before you apply a desired state on a cluster, you can run pre-checks to ensure that all hosts in the cluster are in a good state to be remediated. The pre-checks verify whether any of the hosts in the cluster must be rebooted or are in maintenance mode. You can also check the compliance of the cluster against the desired state. See Checking the Compliance of the Cluster Against the Desired State.
- An offline bundle in a ZIP file format.
- An ISO image.
- A JSON file.
Use the vSphere Lifecycle Manager APIs to import a software specification as a draft and then edit it. You have several options for running the import operation depending on the location and format of the desired software state.