Lifecycle Management, Upgrades and Troubleshooting
Lifecycle management is where VCF exams get practical. SDDC Manager owns bundle download, compliance checking and orchestrated updates; vSphere Lifecycle Manager supplies the per-cluster desired-state image that ESXi hosts converge to. Learn the vocabulary: an update moves within a release train, while an upgrade changes major or minor version and must follow a supported path - verify against the interoperability matrix or upgrade planner before promising a jump.
The workflow
- Configure the depot - online, or offline bundle transfer for air-gapped sites.
- Check bundle compliance per domain and download what is missing.
- Run pre-checks: health, free space, DNS, password validity, vSAN health, backup recommendation.
- Update SDDC Manager first; the orchestrator must be at least as new as what it drives.
- Update domains one at a time; ESXi hosts converge to the vLCM image with vSAN-aware sequencing.
- Update Aria components through Aria Suite Lifecycle, and the vSAN witness appliance separately on stretched clusters.
Traps
- Expecting SDDC Manager to patch Aria internals.
- Forgetting the witness appliance.
- Assuming snapshot-style rollback once hosts are remediated - recovery is normally restore-from-backup.
- Out-of-band fixes: when a vendor patch has no bundle, the Async Patch Tool is the documented route.
Troubleshooting
Work top-down: SDDC Manager task and workflow logs first, then the component's own logs, and generate a support bundle before changing state. Most bring-up and update failures trace to DNS, NTP skew, expiring credentials or an unreachable depot.
Rule of thumb
No backup, no update. If pre-checks cannot be made green, do not force the workflow.