Lifecycle manager Image -vs- baselines

[terrible_towel]

Hi,
I’m getting ready to move our VSAN cluster from 6.7 to 7.0. I’ve already got our vCenter to 7.0U2. Once I get all hosts to 7.0.. I want to
Update them with vmware lifecycle manager. The question for me is image -vs- baseline management.

Using Images is the only way to get automated firmware updates. Its also the only way for the HCL checks to be done. (correct ?)

But images requires the exact same hardware for all hosts in the cluster. But I don’t see why that is.. because you layer on the OEM addon.. and there is just one addon for all of Dell…
So I can see the requirement of the same h/w vendor.. but not identical h/w… why can’t a cluster with R740xd and R750xd’s be managed with the same image?

Right now, I have R740xd’s in my VSAN cluster. I can’t see us replacing all at once.. but I can see replacing them piecemeal..
So that cluster will end up with R740xd..and R7?0xd’s (or whatever’s next) within a few years.. So that leaves using images out (correct?)

Seems like such a waste… there are good benefits to the image approach (firmware, HCL check) that are left out of the baseline approach.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,
Paul

[cloudsuresh]

Hi, 

I might be wrong but my explanation a little bit.

Generally in the enterprise environment even one cycle change in the power(Electric) leads to loss of Billion Dollars. 

Every client expects zero down time. To achieve this we implement High Availability, Fault tolerance, Redundancy for the Applications, Operating Systems, Database , Storage and Network ( if one route fails automatically Data and Voice packets takes another route). To achieve this we maintain similar hardware, same version, same edition. The word "same" is applicable to everywhere in the infrastructure designing. 

My suggestion: if you do not understand the reason even blindly follow and procure similar hardware. 

If you have any doubt just take the support from the vendor like Dell HP IBM Cisco. They explain you clearly. Try to consider previous history of the hardware procurement.