Upgrading and updating hosts in a single remediation operation

[Mark00Bell]

Hello. We have recently upgraded vCenter to v6.5 and we are now upgrading our ESXi hosts from v6.0 to v6.5

Using VUM,  I can perform two remediations, the first to do the upgrade to v6.5 and the second to then install the Critical Host patches. This gets me to ESXi 6.5 P04 Build 15256549.

I believe it is possible to perform both an upgrade and updates in a single remediation operation. I have created a Baseline group containing my Custom ESXi ISO and the Critical Host patches baseline. But when I go through the remediate wizard, the patches shown are for v6.0 and not for v6.5. VUM has scanned the host and seen that some v6.0 patches are required but these cease to be required once the upgrade to v6.5 is performed. Allowing the remediation to run performs the upgrade only.

What I need VUM to do is to perform the upgrade and then scan for missing v6.5 patches and then install those.

Is this possible?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

Mark Bell

[jburen · Accepted solution]

Hi Mark,

Unfortunately, this is not possible. Host patches are only installed when needed. So when your host is still on 6.0, the 6.5 patches are not applied. You have to upgrade your host first to 6.5 in order to install the 6.5 patches. But you could use a PowerCLI script in which you perform these two steps automatically. I wrote a script (Upgrade-Hosts - Pastebin.com ) in which all hosts in a cluster are upgraded and then patched. Remember that this script works in my environment so it needs some adjustments to work in yours.

[Mark00Bell]

Thanks for the response Jburen,

I had guessed this was not possible. We have been able to upgrade and patch all of our ESXI hosts using two steps instead of one.

[nachogonzalez]

I have not personally done this, but what if you create a custom ISO with Image builder (Customizing Installations with vSphere ESXi Image Builder )
Containing the Upgrade ISO and all the patches?

Hope this works