As more and more users are adopting vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) to simplify the lifecycle and configuration management of their ESXi hosts, you may want to get more information about a given vLCM image that has been associated with a specific vSphere Cluster.
While you can certainly get this information using the vSphere UI, you can also get this detailed information by using the vLCM REST API, which can easily be consumed using variety of vSphere SDK Clients including PowerCLI.
For inventory and/or auditing purposes, automation is typically the answer, especially at scale. I will not bore you with the details, but I recently created the following PowerCLI function called Get-vLCMClusterImageInformation and given the name of a vLCM-enabled vSphere Cluster, it will provide you with the associated ESXi base image and all Solutions and Components that is associated with a given image.
Before you can use the function, make sure you have installed the latest version of PowerCLI and then download the PowerShell file and "dot source" the file so that the function is available for use.
. ./Get-vLCMClusterImageInformation.ps1
Next, use the Connect-VIServer cmdlet to connect to your desired vCenter Server.
Here is an example of retrieving the vLCM image information for a vSphere Cluster called "ML Cluster":
Get-vLCMClusterImageInformation -ClusterName "ML Cluster"
If you are interested in listing out the individual components that is a part of the ESXi base image, you can append -ShowBaseImagDetails argument to get additional output:
Get-vLCMClusterImageInformation -ClusterName "ML Cluster" -ShowBaseImageDetails
For those interested in the specific vLCM API that was used to create this PowerCLI function, please see HERE and HERE.
Thanks for the comment!