Host Profiles was introduced with vSphere 4 and has steadily matured since then. This release offers notable improvements in management of the profiles themselves, as well as in day-to-day operations. For starters, an updated graphical editor that is part of the vSphere Web Client now has an easy-to-use search function in addition to a new ability to mark individual configuration elements as favorites for quick access. Administrators now have the means to create a hierarchy of host profiles by taking advantage of the new ability to copy settings from one profile to one or many others. Compliance checks are more informative as well, with a detailed side-by-side comparison of values from a profile versus the actual values on a host.
Profile Management Improvements:
An updated graphical editor that is part of vSphere Web Client now has an easy-to-use search function. It also now can mark individual configuration elements as favorites for quick access. In addition, administrators can now create a hierarchy of Host Profiles by leveraging the new capability to copy settings from one profile to one or many others, verifying differences in the process. Even when part of a cluster, each ESXi host can still have distinct characteristics—a static IP address, for example—that must be accommodated. The process of setting these per-host values is known as host customization. With this release, it is now possible to manage these settings for groups of hosts via CSV file. This will certainly be appealing to customers with larger environments.
Operational Enhancements:
Compliance checks are more informative as well, displaying a detailed, side-by-side comparison of values from a profile versus the actual values on a host. Before remediating, administrators can execute a pre-check, to ensure that all mandatory host customizations are in place and to determine whether or not a particular configuration change requires maintenance mode. Finally, the process of effecting configuration change is greatly optimized in vSphere 6.5. This is a result of vSphere DRS integration for scenarios that require maintenance mode and of speedy parallel remediation for changes that do not.
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