ESXi Patch Listing - esxupdate query

[davidm3281]

Hi --

We have a number of ESX 3. installations. I typically use the "esxupdate query" command from PUTTY and copy/paste the output to a patching spreadsheet in order to keep track of what patches have been applied and the date applied for each of our servers. We use this primarily for auditing purposes. The output of esxupdate query is text.

We have recently installed a few ESXi installations. I notice that the "esxupdate query" command outputs in XML format instead of text. Does anyone know why this is done? Is there a way I can get a basic text report easily?

Any help would be appreciated.

[kjb007]

Well, since you're not really supposed to use ssh into the ESXi console, try the remote CLI. It will give you cleaner output.

vihostupdate.pl --query --server testserver1 --username root --password password

-

---

Produces---

VMware ESX Server 3i 3.5.0 build-110271

Installed packages:

firmware 110271

viclient 103682

tools 110271

-KjB

[nick_couchman]

On the other hand, XML may actually let you track those things better. I'm not sure what your level of experiencing in basic scripting and programming is, but XML is a very, very easy language to parse, and if there aren't already applications out there to look through those XML files, I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard to cook one up. Or the previous suggestion of using the RCLI tools will give you what you're looking for .