I received this question on Twitter from Andreas asking the following:
Is there a way to disable or postpone the #vCenter update notification logon message in the web client? @lamw @vmwarecares @VMwarevSphere pic.twitter.com/tYsikiesIP
— Andreas Peetz🛡️ (@VFrontDe) March 17, 2021
When a new vCenter Server update is available, a notification banner is automatically displayed in the vSphere UI. This functionality was introduced as part of vSphere 7.0 and part of the new vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) capability. This is a very useful feature since administrators spend most of their time in the vSphere UI and when new update was available, it would only be displayed in the VAMI UI, which most folks were not logging into on a regular basis.
Today, the update notification banner is always displayed and there is no way to temporarily disable it. This can be annoying if you do not intend to update your vCenter Server immediately and I assume this is why Andreas was asking about either postponing or disabling the notification all together.
Currently, the only way I am aware of for disabling this notification is to actually disable the vCenter Server Life-Cycle Manager Remote Plugin itself. You can do this by navigating to Administration->Solutions->Client Plugins and then selecting "vCenter Server Life-cycle Manager" and click on the Disable button. You can refresh the webpage or logout and you should no longer see the notification banner.
Disclaimer: By disabling the vCLM plugin, you are disabling more than just the banner but all vCenter vLCM functionality including Interop and Update Planner capabilities. If these are things you require, do not disable the plugin.
I can certainly see a nice feature enhancement in the future where vLCM notifications can be postponed or deferred to a later date. I will share this blog post and feedback with the vLCM PM for consideration.
Hello!
I'd definitely like to second this. Every time VMware gets out a new version of vSphere, I get the other vSphere administrators on my team asking me about the update that they noticed, and whether we should run this update. My answer for the first few weeks or months is the same: No, because the new version of vCenter Server and ESXi is not yet on the support list for our storage and backup vendors.
Still, that banner is there every time they log in, tempting them to update and break our systems. 🙂 And while I'm fairly confident my team can resist such temptations, it's entirely unneccessary. Disabling the entire plugin seems like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
Running an older, but still supported version of vCenter Server is not an error, and shouldn't be treated as such.
Looks like you need Change Management in your company.
Looks like you need to STFU and actually think twice before answering BS. Thats the universal sport nowadays : playing the smart guy by answering something that you think is cool. But its actually not, just revealing your incompetency.
Very useful tip.
Found this blog from March, it is end of October and seems there is no better solution to this yet?
And one more thing - after upgrade we are spammed from vcenter by "Task VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager Update Download on Datacenters in datacenter completed successfully". I just want have email, when there is new update available, to create support ticket in our system - like in 6.x versions. Not to have each day spam ticket that download was successful.
It's not fixed yet as of June 2022, either. 🙁 And it reports on updates and patches to a vCenter version I don't use -- specifically version 8 on my version 7.0.3 vCenters. So thank you William Lam for this.
Oops, make that 2023. Friday...
Jul 2023... Any updates on this ? Could you please kick devs to give us an option to disable or postpone this banner ? Thx !