How can I powerdown VMs to enter Maintenance Mode to apply vCenter component update in vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images when vCenter itself is running

My basic question is: is it possible to use vCenter to apply a component update to the host, seeing as how I would need to shutdown the VMs in order to do it, and crucially 1 of them is a router VM and another 1 is vCenter itself?

I have just done a clean install of the latest ISO of ESXi, 8.0 U2. I have installed a router VM + deployed the vCenter Server Appliance latest version. It will be my only server for now - I can't really use another server to migrate these VMs to.

I see in vCenter 8 that they want you to use Lifecycle Manager Images since they will remove Lifecycle Baselines/VUM in the next version of vCenter 9. I haven't used either of them before.

My server is up-to-date with the latest image, according to the Updates tab in vCenter; however it contains an older version of the smartpqi driver (version 4495) and I'd like to install the latest version of this component driver (smartpqi version 4600) which isn't yet available in the latest ESXi ISO.

I have gone to Lifecycle Manager and done an Import Update with the Offline Bundle provided by VMware for the driver - which is version 4600 compared to the latest version available on the image which is 4495.

I have then edited the image attached to the host to add the additional component, then ran a pre-check:

I see that I need to powerdown my VMs in order to run the update.

If I do this then I would need to shutdown pfSense (router VM) + vCenter.

How will vCenter apply the update if it's VM is shutdown and it has no routing?

Will it just start applying the update once I've shutdown all VM's?

Will it require any user interaction from me during the update process? (The server is remote to me, I could order a KVM session but it's not free)

Is this the correct method to apply the component update?

This one is just the driver for the piece of hardware. I have some more vib's to install for other related things though, and the documentation from the manufacturer of the hardware suggests using esxcli software vib install to do these. Would using this method to install the driver be a better idea than Lifecycle Manager Images? This is what is suggested in the manufacturer's documentation for the driver also, using their own provided .vib file.

I am concerned that the extra .vib files the hardware manufacturer wants me to install after this driver might expect the 4600 version of the main driver component.

As an aside: I notice in the screenshot that it says Quick Boot is not supported on this host but then when I click Remediate it is enabled in the options - should I disable this?