I’ve written a couple of articles about VMware’s Cluster-based Image lifecycle. I wanted to build on vLCM in this blog post on it’s integration with a hardware vendor integration which supports a HSM (Hardware Support Manager..see About Hardware Support Managers). The vendor’s supported HSM allows for your hardware vendor to support the firmware lifecycle using vLCM. In the following blog I’ve already pre-configured HPE OneView for server management and HPE OneView for VMware vCenter which deploys a plugin to a vCenter, I like to see it as a shim.
Please understand that I do not work or am endorsed by HPE in any way and that some of the references HPE solutions require particular licenses, please seek an HPE account team or partner.
Integrating vCenter with HPE OneView for VMware vCenter
Once authenticated to HPE OneView for VMware vCenter >> Go to the drop-down menu and select ‘vCenters’
Click ‘+ Add vCenter’ , input your vCenter information and you can click ‘Add’ or if you want to add this one and have the input fields for another one prompt, click ‘+ Add’
Once saved, if you go to your vCenter, you will find that plug-ins deployed
I have 2 vCenters in ELM, although it shows deployed to my second one, it does not recognize as an HSM, it will require adding the second vCenter in HPE Oneview for VMware vCenter
Under vSphere Administration >> Client Plugins, the plugin was successfully deployed. This will require a refresh of your browser.
Please review VMware by Broadcom KB regarding ‘ Local Plugins’ deprecated – Article ID: 313839
Now if you browse to your vSphere Client menu browser you should find the ‘HPE OneView for VMware vCenter 11.6
We now need to register our OneView instance with the plugin.
From the HPE plugin screen go to ‘HPE OneView Credentials’ click the green + and input your information and click Test and Save.
For the next step, I want to Register a HPE SPP (Service Pack for Proliant) which is a firmware bundle for Proliant line servers. Under the same HPE plugin section, go to ‘HPE OneView Service Pack Management’ and if your plugin can successfully talk to OneView, it should find a SPP. **Note that adding SPPs, firmware, etc. to OneView will be a separate task within OneView, this can vary depending how you manage your servers.
Successful confirmation
Upgrading our vSphere Cluster to vSphere 8
We have an existing cluster that is already Image-Based and has a HPE ESXi image deployed along with an HPE Customization (driver pack for HPE Proliant). You will notice the one component missing is the Firmware and Drivers Addon
Now to Edit the Image
I selected my latest ESXi version as well as the latest HPE Customization pack and next, I will click ‘Select‘ under ‘Firmware and Drivers Addon‘
We now have a supported Hardware Support Manager for firmware lifecycle, select the only one
The HSM will poll and recognize the SPP we registered with vLCM earlier and you can see we have different versions available depending on your version, I will select the version supporting 8.0.3
Now that we have our build-out, we will want to Validate first
Image is Valid, good first step, this means we achieved some interoperability between the stack
Now we can click ‘Save’ and perform Check Compliance
From here you can perform your pre-checks and begin remediation on host(s). Your pre-check should show a nice drift comparison
Due to the limitations of not having physical Proliant servers, I’m unable to demo the firmware lifecycle itself.
The following are some helpful links for learning more and getting started.
HPE OneView Partner Integrations
OneView for VMware vCenter 11.6.0 User Guide
Check out the following HPE YouTube video on instructions for deploying the HPE
