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!
