Performing Discovery and Planning OperationsLast Updated December 16, 2024
You can retrieve information about VMware products associated with
vCenter Server
, list availablevCenter Server
updates, and produce reports. The findings can help you planvCenter 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 forvCenter 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 specificvCenter Server
version.The following table lists the operations that are available in the discovery category.
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 thevCenter Server instance. |
The following table lists the operations that are available in the update category.
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.
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. For information about the HTTP requests that you can use to perform the user operations, see
HTTP Requests for Discovery and Planning Operations
. In addition to sending HTTP requests, you can also run cURL commands to perform operations. See cURL Examples of Performing Discovery and Planning Operations
. - cURL
- The following cURL command examples show the syntax for performing life cycle operations such as discovering and managing product associations, listing updates, performing pre-checks, and retrieving reports.
- This example lists all compatible versions of VMware products that can be associated withvCenter Server.
- This example lists all VMware products associated withvCenter Serverincluding manually added products.
- This example associates a VMware product withvCenter Server.
- This example retrieves details about a product associated withvCenter Server.
- This example updates a VMware product associated withvCenter Server. You can modify only manually added products.
- This example deletes or dissociates a VMware product associated withvCenter Server. You can delete or dissociate only manually added products.
- This example generates an interoperability report for all VMware products associated withvCenter Serveragainst a specificvCenter Serverversion.
- This example lists all available and applicable updates forvCenter Serverversions discovered in your environment. The list can contain minor, in-place, updates and major, migration-based, upgrades. The operation calculates which updates or upgrades are applicable based on the currentvCenter Serverversion.
- This example retrieves details about a specificvCenter Serverupdate. The update is identified by the ID provided in the URL. The update can be either a minor, in-place, update or a major, migration-based, upgrade.
- This example performs source update pre-checks and identifies whether the provided update ID corresponds to a minor update or a major upgrade. In case of a minor update, the operation invokes the appropriate update API. In case of a major upgrade, the operation downloads and installs therequirements.rpmfile for the upgrade. The pre-check can be a long-running task, which you can monitor by using the task ID that the operation returns.
- This example tracks the status, progress, and retrieves the final result of the pre-check operation.
- This example retrieves information about the location of the actual report for downloading.