vMA Update Best Practice

[ralish]

Hi everyone,

I apologise if this is a basic question but I had trouble finding any relevant documentation. Simply, what is the best practice for keeping vMA (v5.0+) up-to-date? I'm currently running a vMA 5.0 VM against a vSphere 5.0 infrastructure and understand the VM is a VMware customised SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 system. The "zypper" tool is still present and an OpenSuSe repository is present in the repository list (in fact, it's the only listed repository).

Is it advisable to install updates which the zypper tool detects via the OpenSuSe repository or is this purely for installing additional utilities that some may need but aren't included with vMA itself? Alterantively, should we generally only install the official VMware patches for updating vMA? I'm currently running vMA 5.0 Patch 2 and have never applied any updates via zypper. If I do run it (but don't proceed) I'm informed there are: "289 packages to upgrade, 82 new, 21 to remove, 289  to change vendor, 13 to change arch."

I'm curious to know what is the best approach here and if VMware has any support policy as I don't want to be installing zypper updates if it voids any support from VMware, but at the same time, I run a network with high security requirements so keeping everything up-to-date is desirable.

Thanks in advance!

[aravinds3107]

Simply, what is the best practice for keeping vMA (v5.0+) up-to-date?

Latest version of vMA is 5.1. from release notes

Important: You cannot upgrade from an earlier version of vMA to vMA 5.1. You need to do a fresh installation of vMA 5.1.

Not sure if my answer is releavant to your question

[ralish]

Hi aravinds3107,

Not  really, as I'm more concerned about the best practice for keeping a  given version up-to-date, as opposed to upgrading to a completely new  version (both vMA 5.0 and 5.1 are still actively supported I believe).  We'll upgrade to vMA 5.1 at the same time we upgrade to vSphere 5.1, but  until then, it'd be good to know how to keep a given version of vMA  updated and if zypper is an appropriate way to do this. The same issue  will apply to vMA 5.1 as well presumably.

Cheers!

[ralish]

No guidance on this? I'm sticking with official VMware patches for vMA until I hear otherwise, but it'd be nice to know for sure one way or another if zypper provided updates are safe. Particularly as various potential vulnerabilities in the appliance in system libraries are likely going to be fixed in the OpenSuSe repository before they are in formal vMA patches from VMware.

[crescendas]

Does vMA 5.1 works with vSphere 4.1? Or must I also use vMA 4.1?

[TiloVM]

hi, I got the same question.

destroyed my vma vMA-5.0.0.2-724898 by running the zypper update (error error while loading shared libraries: libaudit.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)

anyway's I will deply a new vMA-5.1.0.1-1062361 and see how the zypper works before I do much configuration.

Yes 4.1 should work. (https://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/vma51/vma_51_relnotes.html#supported)

You can use vMA to target vSphere 5.1, vSphere 5.0 and later, and vSphere 4.1 and later systems.