How to Remediate Host that Contains VUM VM?

[sexconker]

We have vSphere 5 Essentials.

We have 3 physical hosts, A, B, and C.

We can use vCenter and the VMware Update Manager plugin to remediate hosts A and B.

But vCenter and VMware Udatae Manager live on a VM, and that VM lives on host C.

How can we patch host C?  Do we have to use PowerCLI and do it manually?

Since we have vSphere Essentials, I don't believe we can vMotion the VM to host A or B, then remediate C, then vMotion it back.

[Troy_Clavell]

you could do this.  Make a note of the ESX Host the the vCenter/VUM VM is running on.  Also, make a note of the datastore in which the vCenter/VUM VM is running on.  Using the vSphere Client, log into the ESX Host, power down the guest and remove it from inventory.  Go to the second host in the cluster and browse the datastore in which the vCenter/VUM VM is on, right click on the vmx file and add to inventory.  Power on the VM. This way the vCenter/VUM VM is now registered on another host in the cluster and you can use VUM to patch the remaining host.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

.. alternatively to the option mentioned by Troy, take a look at http://communities.vmware.com/people/vmroyale/blog/2011/09/15/updating-esxi-5--single-use-esxcli-how... to see how the host can be patched manually.

André

[sexconker]

If we had a SAN or other shared datastore not tied to the host we could that.

But since we have 3 hosts with local datastores only, your method requires moving the entire VM to the second host's datastore, right?

Since it's a 200 GB server, it would be much less down time for us if we just did PowerCLI.

[Troy_Clavell]

your best approach since there is no shared storage would be the method a.p. outlined.

Moving the VM in your case would require the use of VMware Converter. Since you have no shared storage your guests are down while remediating the hosts, so just patch using the CLI method.

[sexconker]

Yeah, I've used PowerCLI on our test server so I know how to do that.

Was just wondering if there was an easier way.  Looks like there isn't for us.

Thanks.

[jbsolutios]

We have exactly the same problem. Surely VMware must realise that not everyone has shared storage and there needs to be a simpler way to remediate, especially if you only have three hosts.

Is it possible to upgrade from ESX 4.0 to ESXi 5.0 U1 in the same way please?

Many thanks