You can add a standalone host to a

vCenter Server

instance under a data center object or into a folder. See ESXi Hosts. If you remove a host from a cluster but leave it in the data center, the host is also considered a standalone host.

To manage a standalone host with a software specification, you must first enable the

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

on that host. You can run a preliminary check to establish whether the standalone host meets all requirements for enabling the

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

.

Call the

check_Task(host_ID, check_spec)

method of the

com.vmware.esx.settings.hosts.enablement.Software

interface and pass as arguments the host identifier and a

CheckSpec

instance

. The pre-checks that you can skip before enabling the

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

on a standalone host are the same as for a cluster.

To enable

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

on a standalone host,

call the

enable_Task(host_ID, check_spec)

method of the

com.vmware.esx.settings.hosts.enablement.Software

interface. Pass as arguments the host unique identifier and optionally, a

com.vmware.esx.settings.hosts.enablement.SoftwareTypes.EnableSpec

instance to define whether any checks can be skipped during the feature enablement operation

. Currently, you can skip only the check for orphaned vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs).