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

.

Use the

POST https://

<vcenter_ip_address_or_fqdn>

/api/esx/settings/hosts/

<host_id>

/enablement/software?action=check&vmw-task=true

request and submit the host ID as path parameter

. 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,

use the

PUT https://

<vcenter_ip_address_or_fqdn>

/api/esx/settings/hosts/

<host_id>

/enablement/software?vmw-task=true

request and submit the host ID as path parameter. Optionally, to define whether you want to skip any checks during the feature enablement, you can add a

Software.EnableSpec

data structure to the request body

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