White Papers

6 Dell EMC OMIVV as a Hardware Support Manager for VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager
1 Introduction
Data center is a complex and sensitive environment. Maintaining the software and firmware running on each of
the devices at a standard level becomes crucial in order to achieve uniformity and better manageability.
According to their technical and security assessments, data center admins define the standard levels of
software and firmware and maintain them at the specified levels. These levels are reviewed periodically and
upgraded as needed.
To help the data center administrators in maintaining the firmware levels on their PowerEdge servers in
VMware-based virtualization environment, OMIVV provides an ability to baseline the ESXi clusters to a desired
level and to remediate when there is a drift. With the release of vSphere 7.0, VMware also allows administrators
to baseline vSphere 7.0-based clusters for the desired state of ESXi base image, add-ons, and firmware for the
servers.
This technical white paper describes how baselining is achieved in OMIVV and how the same baselining
mechanism is enhanced to support the vSphere Lifecycle Manager feature in vSphere 7.0 and later versions
using OMIVV as an HSM.