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Nick Schmidt
Nick Schmidt

Posted on • Originally published at blog.engyak.co on

Security patches are available for VMware vCenter 8.0 - Let's try the new vCenter Lifecycle Manager!

Let's take a look at the new lifecycle management process for vCenter.

The old process via the VAMI was easy to execute - the industry is upping the ante with automated pre- and post-testing. Cisco's NX-OS installer is another example - complex procedures (in Cisco's case, sequential PGA or microcode updates) invite problems and escalate a "simple" process to something only the senior-most engineer can safely operate.

vSphere 8 seeks to improve on vSphere 7's upgrade planner by including a "vCenter Lifecycle Manager" to administer package upgrades in an integrated, reliable fashion that includes available pre-checks and reduce "update anxiety".

Then navigate to Updates -> vCenter Server -> Update:

Under Select Version, it's now possible to view eligible updates, along with the type and Release Notes :

For those of us that use NSX Data Center or other integrated products, interoperability checks are part of the wizard

Unfortunately, the vCenter backup step is not included as part of the wizard at this time. (Note: You can back up directly to a filer with vSphere 7 or newer)

Looks like we're not quite ready to use this feature to its fullest potential yet. some notable limitations still exist and should be compensated for:

Establishing processes and automatic patch notifications (RSS is a powerful tool for that) will go a long way toward making a New Year's resolution to keep our systems up to date!

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