Another useful feature of VUM is the option to automate and schedule the upgrade of VM hardware version. A VM with an outdated hardware version cannot take advantage of new features that are introduced in the latest VMware vSphere releases. VUM allows admins to easily identify VMs that don't have a current hardware version and upgrade them automatically.
VUM comes with a predefined VM hardware baseline that you can't change or delete, but you should use to upgrade the VM hardware to the current version (vSphere 6.7 introduces hardware version 14).
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 the 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 option 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 In the Scan for Updates wizard, specify VM Hardware upgrades as the scan option to allow VUM to detect outdated VM hardware.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- Now, click Remediate to configure the task and upgrade the hardware version for outdated VMs.
- 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 is due to the upgrade having 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 to revert the VM to the state before the remediation if something goes wrong during the upgrade process. It's recommended to configure snapshot retention so that you can delete the snapshot after a specified time. This will help you avoid performance issues. Click Next to go to the final step.
- Review your settings selection and click Finish to execute or schedule the remediated task.