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How to automate checking for new vCenter Server updates in vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)?

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A question that I had received during VMware Explore Barcelona, was how to automate the checking for new updates that are available for their vCenter Server? In the vSphere UI, when a new update is available and applicable, you will see a new blue label called Update Available under the Summary view when your vCenter Serve inventory object is selected.


When you click on the label, it will take you the vCenter Server Update Planner, a feature that was introduced back in vSphere 7, which is part of the overall vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) solution.


Here you will be shown a list of all applicable vCenter Server update(s) and/or upgrade(s) for your specific version of vCenter Server, including useful information like severity and even direct links to the release notes, which is extremely useful to quickly get a glance at a particular release.

As you might expect, all of the information displayed within the vSphere UI is available programmatically using the vCenter Server vLCM REST API, enabling users to periodically check when an update is available and create and run interoperability reports using the vCenter Server Update Planner feature.

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Creating custom ESXi images using vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) UI and PowerCLI cmdlets for vSphere 8

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I have started to use vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) more and more, especially after upgrading to vSphere 8 as it will be the primary lifecycle management solution going forward for both vSphere image and configuration management.

The other reason for using vLCM is that vSphere Update Manager (VUM) baselines have also been deprecated in vSphere 8 and while you can still use it for now, it should not come as a surprise that VUM and its functionality will be removed in the future and all of its workflows including the use of vSphere Image Builder should also be transitioned over to using vLCM.

One of the most common and basic workflow for customers today is creating custom ESXi images (ISO or Offline Bundle) that includes additional ESXi drivers. Since vLCM is probably new to most folks (including myself), I wanted to share how you can create your own custom ESXi images using both the vLCM UI (which can be a bit non-intuitive) as well as the new PowerCLI cmdlets that was jus released today as part of PowerCLI 13.0 release that adds support for both vLCM and vSphere 8!

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Virtual NUMA (vNUMA) and CPU Hot-Add support in vSphere 8

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While looking for something in the vSphere 8.0 API Reference, I stumbled onto a new VM configuration setting in vSphere 8 called exposeVnumaOnCpuHotadd which looks quite interesting and has the following description:

Capability to expose virtual NUMA when CPU hotadd is enabled. If set to true, ESXi will consider exposing virtual NUMA to the VM when CPU hotadd is enabled. If set to false, ESXi will enforce the VM to have single virtual NUMA node when CPU hotadd is enabled. If unset, the VM continue to follow the behavior in last poweron.

This actually reminded me of question that we got during one of our vSphere 8 Meet the Experts (MTE) sessions at VMware Explore Barcelona and whether there were any new enhancements to vNUMA when CPU hot-add is enabled, which I was not aware of any at the time. The vNUMA and CPU Hot-Add issue is detailed in this blog post by no other than my buddy Frank Denneman and here is a quick summary of the issue:

CPU Hot-Add is not compatible with vNUMA, if hot-add is enabled the virtual NUMA topology is not exposed to the guest OS and this may impact application performance.

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