vThinkBeyondVM
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Regular patches are planned one, ESXi patch usually gets release every 3 (not strict, it changes) months(It will have bug fixes, important, critical, catastrophic, security fixes etc) . Express patch on the other hand is not planned one: It usally gets released when there is issue which is having impact on multiple customers. Also critical security fixes get into the Express patches.

Checking release notes/KBs on particular patch (either regular patch or express) will help you to understand what is being fixed in the patch, based on that you can decide whether you really need to apply the patch right away or you can wait. If fixes does not impact you, then you need not to apply the patch. However, it is recommended that you apply the latest patch. Sometime you can not know when particular issue may pop up in your environment which was fixed in patch.

Testing on non-production environment usually is not must (people do it just to be on safer side), they look into release notes/KBs of the particular patch and test fixed issues in the patch (those matter to them) to make sure whether fixed issues work fine or not. (some time they check whether upgrade workflow works or not ).  If it works then they go ahead and apply the patch in production. 


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Vikas, VCP70, MCTS on AD, SCJP6.0, VCF, vSphere with Tanzu specialist.
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