vCenter in a VM and updates

[digitlman77]

So, I have decided to install my vCenter in a VM. Everything works great except when I get to try and apply ESX updates to the host. So, I cannot apply updates to the ESX server which is runnnig the vCenter VM? What am I supposed to do, either vmotion the VM to another server when I want to do updates, or if I have shared storage, fire up that VM on another ESX server?

[Troy_Clavell]

well in order to have vMotion, you must have shared storage. So, yes you could vMotion your vCenter VM to another host and then patch.

[digitlman77]

Is that what everybody who uses this config does? It's a little inconvienent! But, I guess not a huge deal if that is the major downside to doing this.

[Troy_Clavell]

in order to patch any host, the host needs to be in maintenance mode, and a host cannot go into maintenance mode unless it's guests are migrated off, or powered down.

Another option would be to shutdown the vCenter VM and then patch using the method below

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/vmroyale/2009/10/12/single-use-esxupdate-how-to-for-esx-4

[JimKnopf99]

Yep,

it was a little bit confusing for me at the beginning. And i am wondering about that. Because i thought it would be easy for the update manager to migrate the host when putting it in maintanace mode. But that doesn´t work. So i check the host previously if there is a vcenter running and vmotioin that machine on an other Host.

Frank

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[mark_chuman]

Agreed, I don't see a problem with patching the ESX host as vCenter would coordinate the maintenance mode and thus the vmotion of "itself" to another ESX host. The only problems I see with vCenter VMs would be if you unexpectedly lose the entire ESX cluster that the vCenter resides on. Managing would then need to be performed at an ESX level. We have six, linked vCenter servers and our policy has been to not allow vCenter servers to manage the cluster they reside on. That cluster is managed by another vCenter server.