I had a customer support case recently where the customer was struggling with updating a vSphere cluster. The customer was already using the vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), but the composed image always returned the error that the hosts were not compatible. So he asked for help.
We knew the installed hardware, we knew the installed (and targeted) ESXi version, and we also knew the currently installed and targeted version of the vendor addon, too. But we were both a bit perplexed. Until we took a closer look at one of the “incompatible” hosts and the error message that revealed the cause of this incompatibility.
The error message told us that vLCM should obviously downgrade something, but couldn’t. Thanks to the listing of what’s currently on the host and what’s in the image of the desired state, we could find out what the issue is. And there were some “components” that differed in the versions. And we saw that the ESXi version was fine, and the image is more up-to-date than the host, and the same for the vendor addon. But we saw that two or three drivers were a little above on the host than in the image. We couldn’t explain this. But with the possibility of manually adding “components” to an image, we were able to fix that.
Long story short, in the vLCM image, you cannot only choose the desired ESXi version and vendor addon, and if you have the hardware support manager (HSM) installed, the latest server firmware. But you can also add specific drivers and updates manually to the image. And you can even upload some updates to the vLCM.
And exactly the last step, uploading a plugin and manually adding such “components” is the topic of this blog post. Let’s dive into it.
Disclaimer
The following steps are related to hardware and software, which may or may not be on the hardware compatibility list (HCL). I’m showing screenshots from my homelab, where I don’t care much for compatibility. It is more kind of “the main thing is that it (somehow) runs and works and does what I want.”
Please use it at your own risk, and probably not in production, except the vendor and / or Broadcom have it on the compatibility list and everything has been checked for being properly supported.
How can I upload a plugin to vLCM?
Well, I’m glad you’ve asked. That’s pretty simple. But before we move on, you may know what plugin I’m using for my homelab and as an example for this blog post. It is the Synology VAAI plugin. You get more information on how to install the plugin (the manual approach), and also the download link, from the Synology website here.
But what is VAAI?
VAAI, short for “vStorage APIs for Array Integration,” is a feature introduced in ESXi that provides hardware acceleration functionality. It enables your host to offload specific virtual machine and storage management operations to compliant storage hardware. With the storage hardware assistance, your host performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth. (Source: knowledge.broadcom.com – FAQ for vStorage APIs for Array Integration).
And now, let’s continue. I assume that you’re already logged in to the vCenter web client.
- In the vSphere web client, click the burger menu in the top-left corner. Then, click the “Lifecycle Manager” entry.
- On the top menu, click “
ACTIONS“, then “Import Updates”
Notice: it doesn’t matter on which tab you’re on in the Lifecycle Manager; you can import updates from any tab. - Next, click “
BROWSE” to open the file dialog, and search for the plugin you’d like to upload
- Next, click “
IMPORT” to start the upload of the plugin to the vLCM library
And we’re done for the first part, we successfully uploaded a plugin to the vLCM library. We continue now with using this plugin in a vLCM image.
How to add a plugin to a vLCM image?
- As we’d like to create an image with this plugin included, navigate to the “
Image Library” tab, and click “CREATE IMAGE”
- We start by providing an image name and choosing the desired ESXi version.
- To add the recently uploaded plugin, you may have to click “
SHOW DETAILS” first, and then click “ADD COMPONENTS”
- In the following dialog box, you can search for the plugin. Just click the filter icon in the “
Component Name” column and enter the plugin name
- Now select the plugin (check the box in front of it), then click “
SELECT” in the lower-right corner
- We can now see the added plugin in the list of components. Next, click “
SAVE” and you’re done with creating the image
You can now move on and assign this image to your cluster and start updating the hosts. Have fun!
