Utilizing update manger when unable to vMotion.

[skumflum42]

Utilizing update manger when unable to vMotion.

I have three Essentials licensed 5.0 hosts and vCenter running on one of them as a VM. All VM is running on local disk. I am tired of patching from CLI and want to utilizing update manger. I can easily do that on the other two host where vCenter is not running but obvious not on the host where it runs.

I have a shared datastore in form of a QNAP NAS but I can’t Storage vMotion due to license restriction. I can’t do a “shared nothing” vMotion to another host due to the same restriction. It seems like a Catch-22 situation.

I have service window where I can power down alle the VM

Anyone have any thoughts about using update manager in this setup or should I just forget about it

[admin · Accepted solution]

Clone the same vCenter to other VM and make it the temp vcenter on another host or else deploy a new vCenter on another host and update the host from there

[skumflum42]

I guess it's possible...thanks.

[Linjo]

I don't think cloning the vCenter is a good idea, there is potential for data corruption when to vCenters are trying to access the same database.

Would recommend a much simpler way, shut down your vCenter (Its not critical to your infrastructure), connect directly to one of your already patched hosts with vSphere Client, register and power on the vCenter VM, connect to the vCenter VM and continue patching.

// Linjo