# Introduction to solution lifecycle management

Lifecycle management with respect to this solution refers to the maintenance and management of software and hardware of various components that make up the solution stack. Lifecycle management is required to keep the solution up-to-date and ensure that the latest versions of the software are running to provide optimal performance, security and to fix any existing defects within the product.

In this section, we will cover life cycle management of the different components that are used in this solution. The lifecycle of the following stacks need to be maintained and managed:

• Monitoring Tools (Splunk or Prometheus and Grafana)
• Docker Enterprise Edition Environment
• Virtual Machine Operating systems
• HPE SimpliVity environment

The general practice and recommendation is to follow a bottom-up approach for updating all components of the environment and making sure the dependencies are met. In our solution, we would start with HPE SimpliVity and end with the monitoring environment. If all components are not being updated at the same time, the same approach can be followed – updating only the components that require updates while adhering to the interdependencies for each component that is being updated.