VMware Cloud Community
Thorian93
Contributor
Contributor

UMDS Infrastructure Best Practice

Hello everyone!

I am fairly new to VMWare and vSphere administration so I hope I didn't miss important things regarding my question. If so feel free to tell me.

So here is what I want to archive:

I want to setup the following enviroment (all hosts v6.x):

  • 1 Update Manager Download Services Server
  • 4 vCenter Servers with Update Manager
    • 1 vCenters will have more than 5 hosts and 50 VMs
    • 3 vCenters will have not more than 5 hosts and 50 VMs

The UMDS Server will have internet connection, the 4 vCenter servers won't. But they will be able to access a shared drive, where the UMDS Server should place the updates and patches.

The vCenter servers exist already and have Update Manager installed. I want to roll out the UMDS with a minimum of costs. The UMDS is not critical but would enhance our infrastructure.

To get me started I have some general questions:

  • Can I use one MSSQL Server 2012 with several instances for all the vCenters and UMDS?
  • Can I use MSSQL Express on the hosts, without using a dedicated MSSQL database, even on a vCenter with more than 5 hosts and 50 VMs?
  • Is there only a command line interface to work with UMDS?
  • Is there no built-in automation in UMDS? Like automatic patch download and export? Do I need to use Windows Scheduled Tasks or something similar?

My research so far:

UM & UMDS DBs on one host - possible? This question would help me move on but it has no answer yet.

Setting up UMDS for vSphere‌  This guide gives some details about  an offline setup‌ but does not go into detail about the UMDS infrastructure.

Setting up Vmware Update Manager Download Service for Isolated Networks‌ Pretty much the same scenario as the abouve post.

I will update this post as I aquire information to be always up to date and to have a How-To or something similar in the end.

Thanks for all your help and support!

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new." - Albert Einstein
Reply
0 Kudos
0 Replies