Update Manager Performance

[jpoling]

I attemtped to use Update Manager this weekend to deploy Windows updates to VMs. It was so painful that I gave up. I tried to deploy patches to about 7 VMs at a single time and the remediation task was at 66% for over 6 hours. I think a couple things may ahve caused the issue:

1. Update manager currently runs on the same system as ourvCenter server (runs as a VM also)

2. There were some disk space issues on some VMs

Our environment is medium-sized (8 hosts, 210 VMs). I am wondering about Update Manager in a few specific areas:

1. Where do I find best practice information for setting up an Update Manager environment?

2. For an environment our size, should Update manager be on it's own system?

3. Is there a way to configure how Update manager deals with issues on the VMs (specifically disk space errors)?

Thanks for any inisight

jeff

[a_p_]

This may not answer your question and you may call me old fashioned, however i believe in selecting the right tool for the job. VUM is built for patching ESX hosts and WSUS is built for Windows.

André

[jpoling]

I think I agree with your premise. So, how do you configure your gpo for servers managed by WSUS? Do they download and install automatically or does an admin have to initiate the install of updates?

[a_p_]

I was afraid you would ask for this.

There's no solution out of the box. It really depends on the server's roles. A couple of servers like file, print, archive, ... can be set to automatically install and reboot. For others like DC's, DB servers and other critical system I rather like to control the update process, like shutting down processes or services prior to applying the downloaded updates. In addition to that, you need to take the virtual environment into account. How many simultaneous reboots can your hosts and storage handle?

If someone has a straight forward solution for this, I'd really be interested. because I don't have one , yet.

André