You can automate the life cycle management of a cluster or standalone host by performing the following operations:

Retrieve information about the current state of the cluster or the standalone host.
Create a desired state that includes a specific version of the
ESXi
host. You can also add some compatible partner software and firmware components and add-ons.
Validate the desired state to detect any discrepancies between the desired state and the host hardware.
Check the compliance of a cluster or host against the desired state and determine whether some additional steps must be taken to ensure the success of the cluster or host remediation.
Apply the desired state on a cluster or a standalone host.

You can use the

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

to manage the life cycle of hosts in a cluster that meet the following requirements:

Hosts must be of version 7.0 and later.
Hosts must be stateful.
All hosts in the cluster must be from the same vendor and with identical hardware.
The hosts must include only integrated solutions, such as VMware vSAN™,
vSphere Supervisor
,
NSX
and VMware vSphere® High Availability.

A standalone host is a host that is added to a

vCenter Server

instance but is not part of any cluster. For more information about how to add, connect, and disconnect standalone host, see ESXi Hosts. You can manage the life cycle of a standalone host by performing almost all

vSphere Lifecycle Manager

operations that you can perform on a cluster level. The only limitation for managing the life cycle of a standalone host through the

vSphere Automation

API, is that you can't update the firmware of the host.