Performing Discovery and Planning Operations
Last Updated December 16, 2024

You can retrieve information about VMware products associated with
vCenter Server
, list available
vCenter Server
updates, and produce reports. The findings can help you plan
vCenter Server
updates in your environment.
The life cycle management API provides operations that are grouped in the discovery, update, and reports categories. The discovery functionality of the API consists of the operations in the discovery category. The planning functionality of the API consists of the operations in the update category. Both functionalities can produce reports that you can download by using the reports category.
The discovery category provides operations for listing VMware products that can be associated with
vCenter Server
, managing products associations, and creating interoperability reports. The update category provides operations for listing all available updates and upgrades for
vCenter Server
and generating a pre-check compatibility report. The reports category provides an operation for downloading reports generated by interoperability and pre-check operations. By using the retrieved information, you can select one of the available patches and can plan an actual patch or upgrade for a specific
vCenter Server
version.
The following table lists the operations that are available in the discovery category.
Discovery User Operations
Operation
Description
Get product catalog
You can retrieve a list of all VMware products that can be associated with
vCenter Server
.
List associated products
You can retrieve a list of all VMware product deployments in the environment that are associated with
vCenter Server
.
The list contains both product deployments discovered automatically and deployments registered manually through the API.
Get associated product information
You can retrieve detailed information about a product associated with
vCenter Server
.
Create product association
You can manually associate a VMware product with
vCenter Server
.
Update product association
You can modify a manually added VMware product that is associated with
vCenter Server
.
You cannot modify VMware products that are discovered automatically.
Delete product association
You can delete or dissociate a manually added VMware product that is associated with
vCenter Server
.
You cannot delete or dissociate VMware products that are discovered automatically.
Create interoperability report
You can create an interoperability report between a
vCenter Server
release version and all products registered with the
vCenter Server
instance.
The following table lists the operations that are available in the update category.
Update User Operations
Operation
Description
List updates
You can retrieve a list of all available
vCenter Server
updates. The list can contain minor, in-place, updates and major, migration-based, upgrades.
Get update info
You can retrieve detailed
vCenter Server
information about a specific update or upgrade.
Create pre-check report
You can create a
vCenter Server
pre-update compatibility check report for a pending update version.
You can export and download the report in CSV format.
The following table lists the operations that are available in the reports category.
Reports User Operations
Operation
Description
Get report
You can download the report generated by the interoperability and pre-check operations. For information about downloading the report, see the
API reference
documentation.
You can run life cycle management operations by using the
vSphere Automation
SDK or sending an HTTP request.
You can use interfaces from the
com.vmware.vcenter.lcm.discovery
,
com.vmware.vcenter.lcm.update
, and
com.vmware.vcenter.lcm
packages to perform discovery, update, and reports operations. For more information, see the
Java API Reference
documentation.