patching, updating and upgrading Lenovo custom ESXi with vCenter LCM

[komanek]

Hello,

I 've vSphere clusters with ESXi 7.0u3 hosts (ThinkSystem SR590 -[7X99CTO1WW]) installed from ISO images offered by Lenovo, managed by vCenter 7.0u3 Enterprise Plus. vCenter's LCM offers patches and upgrades to my hosts, but I don't believe it is aware of the fact, that the hosts use vendor-specific software. Am I wrong and should I make me no worries, just hit it and apply the upgrades? Will it work without risk?

In case I have to ignore "official" upgrades, is there a way to integrate the correct ones into LCM's baselines automatically or am I destined to use offline bundles from https://vmware.lenovo.com/content/custom_iso/7.0/7.0u3/ and apply them manually? As far as Lenovo images are downloadable also directly from the VMware site, I hope there is some easy and supported way how to handle this, I just wasn't able to to find it by myself. It would give me also the benefit of security patches as soon as they are out, not to wait for the complete image release.

Thanks in advance,

  David

[memaad]

You can always download update and patches from VMware site provided by lenovo and push it to LCM, then remediate each esxi host, by creating baseline.

Note : I usually follow this, never had problem.

Applying patches provided by LCM should not create problem, also it should not overwrite any lenovo specific drivers.

[komanek]

Thank you for the reply. So, does it mean, the Lenovo contribution to the ESXi image has no overlap in the sense I can mix updates and upgrades from VMware and Lenovo sources?

[memaad · Accepted solution]

yes, however if you doing upgrade always get custom image from vmware site or vendor site.

[komanek]

Thank you very much for the explanation. So I will stick to the Lenovo-based images + apply official security patches when needed.

[a_p_]

Although the question has already been marked as solved, let me add a quick note.

With vSphere 7.0, VMware introduced a Desired State update model with vLCM. For this you need to switch from VUM to vLCM on the cluster level. With the Desired State model, you can select the ESXi version/patch that you want to update the host to, as well as the required "Vendor Add-On" which - in this case - contains the additional drivers for your hardware.

ANdré

[komanek]

Thank you for these details. It could be interesting to use that vendor-aware LCM feature. I will study it more thoroughly, thaks for pointing in this direction.

[basteku73]

You can use LCM Image feature. 

You can assign ESXi version and Vendor Addon. 

ie:

regards, 

Sebastian