VMware ESXI - 6.7 Instruction Manual
vSphere Host Profiles
17 APR 2018
VMware vSphere 6.7
VMware ESXi 6.7
vCenter Server 6.7
vSphere Host Profiles
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Contents
About vSphere® Host Profiles 5
Introduction To vSphere Host Profiles 6
1
Host Profiles Usage Model 6
Reference Host Independence 7
Using Host Profiles 8
2
Access Host Profiles 8
Create a Host Profile 8
Attach Entities to a Host Profile 9
Detach Entities from a Host Profile 10
Check Compliance 10
Remediate a Host 11
Edit a Host Profile 12
Duplicate a Host Profile 15
Copy Settings from Host 16
Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy 16
Import a Host Profile 17
Export a Host Profile 17
Copy Settings to Host Profile in the vSphere Web Client 18
Configuring Host Profiles 19
3
Host Customization 19
Configure Security Host Profile 24
Configure Networking Host Profiles 25
Recommended Host Profiles Upgrade Workflows 27
4
vCenter Server Upgrade from 6.0 to 6.7 With Stateful ESXi Hosts Version 6.0 or Earlier 27
vCenter Server Upgrade from 6.5 to 6.7 With Stateful ESXi Hosts Version 6.5 or Earlier 29
vCenter Server Upgrade from 6.0 to 6.7 in Environment With Stateless ESXi 6.0 Hosts Only 31
vCenter Server Upgrade from 6.5 to 6.7 in Environment With Stateless ESXi 6.5 Hosts Only 32
Answer File Field and Host Profile Extraction 33
Troubleshooting Host Profiles 35
5
Host Customization Data Is Missing 35
Reference Host is Unavailable 36
Compliance failures with Storage Host Profiles 36
Edit Settings for Host Profiles is Failing 37
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vSphere Host Profiles
Host Profile without NFS Datastore 38
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About vSphere® Host Profiles
The vSphere Host Profiles documentation provides information about managing Host Profiles.
The vSphere Host Profiles documentation describes how to manage and configure Host Profiles in the
vSphere Client.
Intended Audience
The vSphere Host Profiles documentation is intended for administrators who are familiar with vSphere
host configuration.
vSphere Client
Instructions in this guide reflect the vSphere Client (an HTML5-based GUI). You can also use the
instructions to perform most of the tasks by using the vSphere Web Client (a Flex-based GUI).
Tasks for which the workflow differs significantly between the vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client
have duplicate procedures that provide steps according to the respective client interface. The procedures
that relate to the vSphere Web Client, contain vSphere Web Client in the title.
Note In vSphere 6.7, most of the vSphere Web Client functionality is implemented in the vSphere Client.
For an up-to-date list of the unsupported functionality, see Functionality Updates for the vSphere Client.
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5
Introduction To vSphere Host
Profiles 1
The Host Profiles feature creates a profile that encapsulates the host configuration and helps to manage
the host configuration, especially in environments where an administrator manages multiple hosts or
clusters in vCenter Server.
Host Profiles provide an automated and centrally managed mechanism for host configuration and
configuration compliance. Host Profiles can improve efficiency by reducing reliance upon repetitive,
manual tasks. Host Profiles capture the configuration of a pre-configured and validated reference host,
store the configuration as a managed object and use the catalog of parameters contained within to
configure networking, storage, security, and other host-level parameters. Host Profiles can be applied to
individual hosts, a cluster, or all the hosts and clusters associated to a host profile. Applying a Host Profile
to a cluster affects all hosts in the cluster and result in a consistent configuration across the applied hosts.
Host Profiles can be used to validate the configuration of a host by checking compliance of a host or
cluster against the Host Profile that is associated with that host or cluster.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n
Host Profiles Usage Model
n
Reference Host Independence
Host Profiles Usage Model
The Host Profiles workflow starts with the concept of a reference host. The configuration of the reference
host, which is extracted as a host profile, serves as a configuration template for configuring other hosts.
The reference host does not have to be related or associated with the host profile extracted from it.
Before you begin, ensure that you have an existing vSphere environment installation with at least one
properly and completely configured ESXi host.
The sequence required to create a host profile from a reference host, apply the host profile to a host or
cluster and check compliance against the host profile is as follows:
1 Set up and configure the reference host.
2 Create a host profile from the reference host.
3 Attach hosts or clusters to the host profile.
4 Check the compliance to the host profile. If all hosts are compliant with the reference host, they are
correctly configured.
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5 Apply (remediate).
As a licensed feature of vSphere, Host Profiles are only available when the appropriate licensing is in
place. If you see errors, ensure that you have the appropriate vSphere licensing for your hosts.
If you want the Host Profile to use directory services for authentication, the reference host needs to be
configured to use a directory service. See the vSphere Security documentation.
vSphere Auto Deploy
For hosts provisioned with vSphere Auto Deploy, vSphere Web Client owns the entire host configuration,
which is captured in a Host Profile. Usually, the Host Profile information is sufficient to store all
configuration information. Sometimes the user is prompted for input when the host provisioned with Auto
Deploy boots. See the vSphere Installation and Setup documentation for more information on Auto
Deploy.
Reference Host Independence
A dedicated reference host is not required to be available to perform host profile tasks.
When you create a host profile, you extract the configuration information from a specified ESXi reference
host. In previous releases, vSphere required that the reference host was available for certain Host
Profiles tasks, such as editing, importing, and exporting. From vSphere 6.0 and later, a dedicated
reference host is no longer required to be available to perform these tasks.
For host profile tasks that require a reference host, an ESXi host that is compatible to the host profile is
assigned as the role of reference host.
Sometimes, a compatible host is not available to validate the host profile during these tasks. If you made
small changes to the host profile that do not require validation, you can choose to skip the validation. If
you choose to skip the host validation, a warning displays indicating that no valid reference host is
associated with the profile. You can then proceed and complete the task.
Due to the introduction of this feature, users can no longer edit or change the reference host from the
vSphere Web Client. The reference host selection occurs at runtime, without notifying users, in the
vCenter Server for on-going tasks.
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Using Host Profiles 2
This section describes how to perform some of the basic tasks for Host Profiles.
This chapter includes the following topics:
n
Access Host Profiles
n
Create a Host Profile
n
Attach Entities to a Host Profile
n
Detach Entities from a Host Profile
n
Check Compliance
n
Remediate a Host
n
Edit a Host Profile
n
Duplicate a Host Profile
n
Copy Settings from Host
n
Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy
n
Import a Host Profile
n
Export a Host Profile
n
Copy Settings to Host Profile in the vSphere Web Client
Access Host Profiles
The Host Profiles main view lists all available profiles. Administrators can also use the Host Profiles main
view to perform operations on host profiles and configure them.
Procedure
1 From the home menu, click Policies and Profiles.
2 Select Host Profiles.
Create a Host Profile
You create a host profile by extracting the designated reference host configuration.
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Prerequisites
Verify that you have a working vSphere installation and at least one completely and properly configured
host that acts as the reference host.
Procedure
1 Navigate to the Host Profiles main view and click Extract Host Profile.
2 Select the host that acts as the reference host and click Next.
The selected host must be a valid host.
3 Enter the name and description for the new profile, and click Next.
4 Review the summary information for the new profile and click Finish.
The new profile appears in the Host Profiles pane.
Note Host profiles do not capture offline or nonpresent devices. Any changes made to offline devices
after extracting a host profile do not make a difference to the compliance check results.
Attach Entities to a Host Profile
After creating a host profile from a reference host, you attach the host or cluster to the host profile.
Note You can also attach a host profile by right-clicking the specific host and select Host Profiles >
Attach Host Profile.
Procedure
1 From the Host Profiles main view, select the host profile to be applied to the host or cluster.
2 Click Attach/Detach a host profile to hosts and clusters.
3 Select the host or cluster from the expanded list and click Attach.
The host or cluster is added to the Attached Entities list.
4 (Optional) Click Attach All to attach all listed hosts and clusters to the profile.
5 If you enable Skip Host Customization you will not need to customize hosts during this process.
If you skip host customizations during this process, you should edit or import host customizations
before you remediate the host profile
6 Click Next.
7 (Optional) You can update or change the user input parameters for the Host Profiles policies by
customizing the host. You will not see this step if you enabled Skip Host Customization.
See Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy.
8 Click Finish to complete attaching the host or cluster to the profile.
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Detach Entities from a Host Profile
To disassociate a configuration from an ESXi host or an entire cluster, that host or cluster must be
detached from the host profile.
When a host profile is attached to a cluster, the host or hosts within that cluster are also attached to the
host profile. However, when the host profile is detached from the entire cluster, there is no association
between the host or hosts within the cluster and that host profile.
Detaching a host profile from an ESXi host or a cluster does not delete that host profile. You can delete
the host profile after detaching it from all the entities it is associated with.
Note You can also detach a host profile by right-clicking the specific host and select Host Profiles >
Detach Host Profile. Detaching a host profile from an ESXi host is non-disruptive.
Procedure
1 From Host Profiles main view, select the host profile to be detached from the entire cluster or
individual hosts.
2 Click Attach/Detach a host profile to hosts and clusters .
3 Select a host or a cluster from the expanded list in the right pane and click Detach.
The host or cluster is moved to the left pane list.
4 (Optional) Click Detach All to detach all listed hosts and clusters from the profile.
5 Click Next.
6 Click Finish to detach the host or cluster from the host profile.
Check Compliance
You can confirm the compliance of a host or cluster to its attached host profile and determine which, if
any, configuration parameters on a host are different from those specified in the host profile.
Procedure
1 Navigate to Host Profiles main view.
2 Right click a host profile.
3 Click Check Host Profile Compliance.
The compliance status is updated as Compliant, Unknown, or Non-compliant.
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A non-compliant status indicates a discovered and specific inconsistency between the profile and the
host. To resolve this, you should remediate the host. Any unknown status indicates that the compliance of
the host could not be verified; to resolve the issue, remediate the host through the host profile. Very often
the compliance check fails because the host is disconnected.
Note Host profiles do not capture offline or unpresented devices. Any changes made to offline devices
after extracting a host profile will not make a difference to the compliance check results.
What to do next
To see more detail on compliance failures, select a host profile from the Host Profiles main view for
which the last compliance check produced one or more failures. In order to see specific detail on which
parameters differ between the host that failed compliance and the host profile, click on the Monitor tab
and select the Compliance view. Then select the failing host. The differing parameters are displayed in
the Compliance window, below the host list.
Remediate a Host
In the event of a compliance failure, use the Remediate function to apply the host profile settings onto the
host. This action changes all host profile managed parameters to the values contained in the profile
attached to the host.
Prerequisites
Verify that the profile is attached to the host.
Procedure
1 Navigate to Host Profiles main view.
2 Right-click the host profile and select Remediate.
Note Certain Host Profile policy configurations require that the host be rebooted after remediation.
In those cases, you are prompted to place the host into maintenance mode. You might be required to
place hosts into maintenance mode before remediation. Hosts that are in a fully-automated DRS
cluster are placed into maintenance mode at remediation. For other cases, the remediation process
stops if the host is not placed into maintenance mode when it is needed to remediate a host.
3 Select the host or hosts you want to remediate with the host profile.
The host profile will be applied to each host that you select.
4 (Optional) Enter the host customizations to specify host properties or browse to import a host
customization file.
You can update or change the user input parameters for the Host Profiles policies by customizing the
host, and click Next.
Note See Host Profiles and vSphere Auto Deploy for more information about vSphere Auto Deploy.
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5 Click Pre-check Remediation to check if the selected hosts are ready for remediation.
This check generates a list of tasks that will be performed on the host.
6 Select the checkbox to reboot the host if it is required in order to complete the remediation process. If
you wish to manually reboot the host after the process, do not select the checkbox.
7 Review the tasks that are necessary to remediate the Host Profile and click Finish.
The compliance status is updated.
Edit a Host Profile
You can view and edit Host Profiles policies, select a policy to be checked for compliance, and change
the policy name or description.
Procedure
1 Navigate to Host Profiles main view.
2 Select the host profile that you want to edit and click the Configure tab.
3 Click Edit Host Profile.
4 (Optional) Click the Name and description tab to change the profile name and description.
5 In the Edit host profile page expand each category to view or edit a particular policy or settings.
Note See Edit a Policy for detailed instructions for editing a Host Profile policy. See Disable Host
Profile Component or Subprofile for detailed instructions on enabling or disabling a policy from
compliance check or remediation.
6 View All host profile configurations or only Favorites configurations.
You can mark a configuration as a favorite with the star icon. Those are then added to Favorites
configurations.
7 (Optional) In the search field, filter the configuration names and values you want to view.
For example, enter SNMP. All configurations that relate to SNMP are displayed.
8 (Optional) Customize the hosts.
Make any changes to the available configuration values for this profile and click Save.
Note The host customization settings page only appears if you changed any settings that require
host customizations.
The changes are made when the "Update Host Profile" task is completed in the Recent Tasks status. If
you attempt to remediate the profile before the task is complete, the profile configuration does not contain
the change.
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