FAQ

Life Cycle Manager (LCM) is the infrastructure upgrade process for Nutanix software and component firmware on Nutanix cloud platform.

LCM enables the upgrade of more than one infrastructure component at a time, automatically handling any deployment dependencies by managing the upgrade order, and provides the simplest and most efficient way to keep Nutanix clusters up to date, saving precious IT administration time and resources.

LCM provides two major operations:

(i) Inventory operation (read-only scan)

An Inventory operation scans Nutanix clusters and provides information on the running components and versions within your cluster for supported Firmware and Software. 

(ii) Update Operation (component upgrade)

An Update operation conducts the upgrade of the components selected by the IT administrator.

The matrix of supported software and firmware is constantly evolving, so please check the latest LCM Release Notes on the Nutanix Support Portal for details. 

On Prism Central, LCM currently supports the native Nutanix offerings for Prism Central such as Objects, Karbon and Calm

On Prism Element, LCM currently supports AOS, AHV, Prism, Files, Foundation and component firmware. 

LCM is included in all  Starter Software License of AOS. 

To provide a single upgrade management plane for all Nutanix products and the underlying firmware, Nutanix is transitioning all upgrade workflows into LCM.

If the component is supported in LCM then you should use LCM to handle the upgrade, and some newer product version upgrades (for example, newer 2019 AHV versions) are only supported via LCM. 

The supported hardware vendor list is being expanded constantly, and includes firmware upgrades for appliances from Nutanix, Lenovo, HPE, Fujitsu, Dell, Inspur and Intel. Further details can be found in the LCM Release Notes. 

Yes. For clusters that do not have Nutanix Support Portal connectivity, there is an LCM Dark Site Bundle available that can be deployed to a local web server in your cloud’s datacenter. Details can be found on the Nutanix Support Portal.

LCM can be accessed through the Prism UI in both Prism Element and Prism Central. On newer AOS versions LCM can be found under the main menu. Prior to AOS version 5.11, LCM can be found in the Settings 'gear icon'.