In this guide i will go over the manual steps of getting an existing 8.x Aria Suite Lifecycle appliance to support the latest product releases available. Here is a great blog that goes in to the details about what the Product Support Pack is https://blogs.vmware.com/management/2019/01/vrslcm-pspak.html. Typically the newer Product Support Pack is included part of the upgrade for Aria Suite Lifecycle, however sometimes there are product releases in between releases where product support packs come in handy. As of 8.16.0 Product Support Pack 4 we can no longer automatically download the Product Support Pack files. The release notes can be found here.

The first step is to log in to Aria Suite Lifecycle under the Lifecycle Operations section

The image shows a dashboard with ‘Lifecycle Operations’ highlighted under ‘My Services’.

Go to settings -> Product Support Pack

Settings page with various options, including Product Support Pack.

Make sure you download the patch from the support portal first from https://support.broadcom.com

Download VMware Aria Suite patch from the Broadcom support portal.

The direct link is here.

We can see that the are no Product Support Packs available

No additional Product Support Packs found for current version.

We can click on upload and import the new downloaded Product Support Pack

Upload Support Pack File: Click ‘Select File’ to upload, then ‘Import’ to apply.

We can check on the status of the import by clicking on Click Here in the request window

Upload support pack request submitted; click link to check status. Request details showing Stage 1 of Offline PSPack setting in VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle.

Once completed we can see that PSPACK 8.16.0.4 is available. Based on what we can see in the details the new support pack adds support for a few additional product versions.

Click on Apply Version

UI shows product versions and “Apply Version” button for Aria Suite.

Verify that a snapshot or a backup exists and click Submit

Confirming Aria Suite Lifecycle snapshot before applying PSPACK upgrade.

We can view the progress by clicking on the Click Here link after submitting the request

Support pack request submitted; click “Click here” to check status.

Once the process is complete the system will most likely reboot. To check the status we can go back to settings -> Product Support Pack. As we can see we are now at the updated patch level

VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle shows a patch update in progress, with a diagram indicating Stage 1.

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