vHost Vendor Drivers

[pamiller21]

Hey all,

I have been running a vhost environment for several years and sadly to admit I am very poor at keeping the vendor (IBM/HP) drivers up to date like I believe I should. I have been lucky and only ran into 2 or 3 times where a NIC driver or something on the vendor end caused a problem.  I am just wondering and asking for advice on how others keep theirs up to date, so I would love information like:

1) What sites or email list to do check to hear about drivers that I need to update?
2) How often do you check?

3) What is the best method do you use to deploy the updates? (USB key, some method to push updates, or something else)

Any help or extra advice would be GREATLY appreciated!

[jrmunday]

Hi pamiller21,

For HP hardware, you can use the HPE Online Depot to review updates;

HPE Software Delivery Repository vibsdepot (aka HPE Online Depot)

HP also publish a recipe for combinations of supported driver and firmware combinations - important for support cases;

https://vibsdepot.hpe.com/hpq/recipes/HPE-VMware-Recipe.pdf

HP also publish the contents of their customised ESXi images;

http://h20564.www2.hpe.com/hpsc/doc/public/display?docId=c04430318

From an operational perspective, I review the release notes of all updates for fixes and enhancements, and then make an informed decision if it warrants deployment or not. My approach is to deliver operational stability first, so there should be a compelling reason to introduce change into the environment. ie. Not just upgrade because we can.

Historically, I have always used VUM to import the drivers and maintain a vendor specific baseline to patch all hosts to the same level. Initial tests can be done by installing the VIB manually using esxcli, before importing it into your repository.

Cheers,

Jon