One of the major benefits of VCF on VxRail is the complete end-to-end life cycle of the entire hardware and software stack. This makes operating the data center fundamentally simpler by bringing the ease-of-built in life-cycle automation for the entire cloud infrastructure stack including hardware. The SDDC Manager orchestrates the end-to-end life-cycle process and is fully integrated with VxRail Manager for each cluster. The VxRail hardware and software life cycle are orchestrated from the SDDC Manager. The underlying upgrade process for each cluster is managed by VxRail Manager to upgrade the hardware, firmware, and the vSphere ESXi and vSAN.

Figure 43.          VCF on VxRail LCM Components

Credentials for a My VMware account and a Dell EMC Support account must be provided for the LCM process to download the appropriate upgrade bundles. VMware and Dell EMC validate updates and distribute them using native VCF and Dell EMC VxRail upgrade bundles. Upon notification of the available update, the upgrade bundle must be manually downloaded and staged to SDDC Manager before starting the upgrade.

Note: The Mgmt WLD must be upgraded first. Upgrades cannot be applied to VxRail VI WLD before they are applied to the Mgmt WLD.