Made baseline with 5.5U3 patch excluded. After patching, host says it has 5.5U3?

[nebben]

I created a patch baseline and excluded patch ESXi550-Update03 because of concerns over KB2133118. I scanned a host and verified that this patch was not on the list that would be applied. I remediated, installed, and watched the host reboot. After it rebooted, it indicates that the build on this host is now ESXi 5.5 build 3029944, which suggests it is currently on ESXi 5.5 U3, which I did not want.

After to test, I created a baseline separately that only consists of this patch- if I attach the baseline and scan the host in question, it shows that 5.5 U3 rollup isn't present...but the build number conflicts.

Is this host on 5.5 U3 , or not?

[Techie01 · Accepted solution]

Hi Nebben

Let me try to give some background. " ESXi550-Update03 "  is a roll-up bulletin. Which means that, if you have 55 GA version of ESX and if you want to reach to 55U3 level directly, create a baseline with this bulletin and install. It will contain all fixes released from 55GA up until 55U3.

But Vmware releases individual bulletins ( per every changed VIB)  also in every release. Which means that, for every update release, there will be individual bulletins and one big rollup bulletin.  Either you select all individual bulletins or select the single rollup bulletin.

From your question, I believe that, you have selected all other bulletins except this " ESXi550-Update03 " rollup bulletin. If you have done that, you might have already included 55U3 individual bulletins in your baseline ( there are 13 individual bulletins released as part of 55U3 itself)  . So, your machine is already on 55U3.

Please check if you have selected any bulletins with name "ESXi550-2015092XX-UG"  ( replace XX with numbers) in your baseline while patching. If yes, you have already installed 55U3.

Another way to find out if you have installed 55U3,  is to paste the output of "esxcli software vib list"

Please share your final observation