Standalone Update Manager??

[tlyczko]

We have 1 standalone ESX 3.5 server with 1 host license that we originally got as an ESX 3.0 Starter Edition, thus we don't have Virtual Center etc.

The license is on the host instead of in a license server.

We had purchased 1 year of support (expired, not renewed, waiting till we really can virtualize more servers), so we were able to get ESX 3.5.

This summer I upgraded it to Update 1 by doing a new/clean install of 3.5U1.

Now Update 2 is out and I'm planning this upgrade.

Is it possible to obtain, install, and use a standalone Update Manager to perform an Update 2 upgrade??

I could not find a UM download on the downloads page that I saw on VMware's site.

Thank you, Tom

[jrenton]

You will need Virtual Center to be able to use Update Manager. You can install the Update Manager Download Services from the umds subdirectory on the Virtual Center install CD but to roll the patches out to the hosts you will need the remediate function in VC.

You could alternatively download the patches and install them manually on your host.

[BillStirling]

To use the Update Manager product you need VC but you can download the individual patch files and apply them from the command line (using esxupdate). If you have a current login you can download the all required patches as a single download and unpack it and create a depot directory and again use the esxupdate command line

[tlyczko]

I will do this after I find documentation about creating a depot

directory etc.

Thank you, Tom

[BillStirling]

If you download the complete package then it comes as a zip file which is, in effect, a complete depot directoy. You just create a directory on your ESX server (or on the shared SAN storage) say /depot or /u2rev unzip all the files and directories from the download into this directory and then just run esxupdate:

esxupdate -d /u2rev --noreboot update

Then reboot when done.

Bill

[tlyczko]

Thank you very much for this information!!

I will do this with the U2 update this coming Sunday!!

Thank you, Tom

[chill]

This is the link to the Patch Management Guide:

Quite informative and an easy process. Keep in mind that you don't need to reboot after each individual patch. You can delay the reboot process until after all the patches. This is described in this guide.

Please remember to award points if you find this information useful

[tlyczko]

Actually the reason I asked all this is so I can upgrade from 3.5 U1 to

U2 without having to do a full re-install and re-configure etc.

The big DVD-sized file for the upgrade isn't a bootable DVD, it's a big

DVD-sized collection of files which I can apparently run with esxupdate.

Thank you, Tom