Host Patching

[nw1977]

Hi experts

First of all, I should say I'm new to ESX so please forgive any mistakes!

I'm looking for some guidance on host patching. I have inherited a bunch of ESXi 4.0 hosts, connected to vCenter. Looking at the build numbers, the hosts haven't been updated for some time - with the builds varying from ESXi 4 Update 2 to just the original 4.0 build.

My question is, what level should I bring these hosts up to? ESXi 4.0 Update 4? Is update manager the best way to do this? Are there any patches along with the update 4 that I need to apply? security patches etc?

These are HP servers, and have the HP offline bundle on there, will I also have to update that, or can update manager carry that out?

Finally, many of the hosts are 'standalone', only having datastores on local disk - apart from having to power off the VMs running on those hosts, are there any risks to the VMs themselves in carrying out the update? I assume nothing is done to the local VMFS?

Thanks in advance guys,

[MKguy]

My question is, what level should I bring these hosts up to? ESXi 4.0 Update 4? Is update manager the best way to do this? Are there any patches along with the update 4 that I need to apply? security patches etc?

Bringing them to the latest ESXi 4.0 build would be a good start. You should also consider an update to 4.1/5.0/5.1 too.

Yes, Update Manager is generally the best and most convenient way to patch hosts.

Just apply the default VMware baseline for critical and non-ctritical updates. VUM will correlate and handle everything else and as ESXi patches/updates are cumulative, apply only the latest releases for each package once.

First of all, you should update your vCenter/VUM to the desired release level though.

These are HP servers, and have the HP offline bundle on there, will I also have to update that, or can update manager carry that out?

Yes, import the latest 4.0 HP bundle into your VUM repository and add it to a (host extension) baseline:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=MTX-63cc9c9bb0f54f17...

Finally, many of the hosts are 'standalone', only having datastores on local disk - apart from having to power off the VMs running on those hosts, are there any risks to the VMs themselves in carrying out the update? I assume nothing is done to the local VMFS?

That's correct, local or remote VMFS volumes will not be touched and stay intact. Only major releases like 4.x->5.x (VMFS3->VMFS5) provide you the option of manually upgrading VMFS volumes.

[sparrowangelste]

nw1977 wrote:

My question is, what level should I bring these hosts up to? ESXi 4.0 Update 4? Is update manager the best way to do this? Are there any patches along with the update 4 that I need to apply? security patches etc?

VUM is your best bet if you have vsphere. that is vsphere update manager.

These are HP servers, and have the HP offline bundle on there, will I also have to update that, or can update manager carry that out?

you can update that and you can let VUM do the patches for that too

Finally, many of the hosts are 'standalone', only having datastores on local disk - apart from having to power off the VMs running on those hosts, are there any risks to the VMs themselves in carrying out the update? I assume nothing is done to the local VMFS?

Your VMFS datastore should be ok, your vms will ened to be powered off during the update. make sure you ahve a good back up. in case your esxi host dies you can always go back to the previous one.

http://sparrowangelstechnology.blogspot.com/2012/07/esxi-recovering-from-bad-update-last.html

[nw1977]

Thanks guys. Just one more thing on the patching - with update manager 4.0 is there a way to add the HP offline bundle? I've seen articles stating that you can 'import patches', but that button/link isn't in the version of update manager I'm using.

Is there another way to import these into VUM or do I have to install manually?

[nw1977]

Hi - Just wanted to check on thoughts around the last question - how to import patches into vcenter, given that there isnt a 'import patches' option in the gui  with the version being used.