Another useful feature of VUM is the option to automate and schedule the upgrade of VM hardware version. VM with an outdated hardware version cannot take advantage of new features introduced in the latest VMware vSphere release. VUM allows admins to easily identify VM that doesn't have a current hardware version and upgrade it automatically.
VUM comes with a predefined VM hardware baseline you can't change or delete but you should use to upgrade the VM hardware to the current version (vSphere 6.5 introduces hardware version 13).
Hardware upgrades can be performed only while the VM is powered off. If you plan a hardware upgrade of your VM, you should consider that this process will cause downtime.
The hardware upgrade steps are similar to what we have discussed already:
- From vSphere Web Client, go to VMs and Templates inventory view and select the object level (data center for example) on which you want to attach the baseline.
- Select the Update Manager tab and click the Attach Baseline... button. Select the VM Hardware Upgrade to Match Host baseline and click OK.
- Click the Scan for Updates... button to check the VM's compliance against the attached baseline. In the Scan for Updates wizard, specify VM Hardware upgrades as the scan option to allow VUM to detect outdated VM hardware then click OK.
- Now click Remediate... to configure the task to upgrade the hardware version for outdated VM.
- The remediation procedure requires the selection of the baseline to attach and the selection of the objects to remediate.
- The remediation task can be scheduled to be executed in the correct maintenance window where the downtime due to the upgrade has a minor impact on the production environment. By defining a task name and a task description, you can remediate the VM on power cycle or you can specify three different schedules depending on the state of the VM—powered on, powered off, or suspended. By default, all three options are configured to run the action immediately so you should pay attention before confirming the remediation execution. Click Next to continue:
- Specify the remediation Rollback options step in order to revert the VM to the state before the remediation if something goes wrong during the upgrade process. It's recommended to configure a snapshot retention in order to delete the snapshot after a specified time to avoid performance issues. Click Next to go to the final step.
- Review your settings selection and click Finish to execute or schedule the remediate task.