Installation guide

Update Manager monitors hosts and virtual machines for compliance against your defined upgrade baselines.

Noncompliance appears in detailed reports and in the dashboard view. Update Manager supports mass

remediation.

See the VMware vCenter Update Manager Installation and Adminstration Guide accessible on the VMware vCenter

Update Manager Documentation page: http://www.configuresoft.net/support/pubs/vum_pubs.html.

Orchestrated Upgrade of Hosts Scenario

Update Manager allows you to perform orchestrated upgrades of the ESX/ESXi hosts in your vSphere inventory

using a single upgrade baseline.

You can perform orchestrated upgrades of hosts at the folder, cluster, or datacenter level.

Recommendation for Static IP Addresses

VMware recommends that you use static IP addresses for ESX/ESXi hosts. During host upgrade, static IP

addresses are a requirement.

DHCP IP addresses can cause problems during host upgrades. Suppose, for example, a host loses its DHCP

IP address during the upgrade because the lease period configured on the DHCP server expires. The host

upgrade tool that you are using (for example, vCenter Update Manager) would lose connectivity to the host.

The host upgrade might be successful, but the upgrade tool would report the upgrade as failed, because the

tool would be unable to connect to the host. To prevent this scenario, use static IP addresses for your hosts.

vSphere Components Upgraded by Update Manager

Multiple VMware vSphere components are upgraded when you upgrade using Update Manager.

The following vSphere components are upgraded by Update Manager.

Virtual machine kernel (vmkernel)

Service console, where present

Virtual machine hardware

VMware Tools

Guest operating systems service packs and patch releases

For components that are not listed here, you can perform the upgrade by using the appropriate third-party

tools or by using other upgrade methods.

After the upgrade to ESX 4.1, the service console's partitions are stored in a .vmdk file. These partitions

include /, swap, and all the optional partitions. The name of this file is esxconsole-

system-

uuid

/esxconsole.vmdk. All .vmdk files, including the esxconsole.vmdk, are stored in VMFS volumes.

Preserved Configuration Components

When you upgrade to ESX 4.1/ESXi 4.1, the host upgrade process preserves many components of the

ESX 3.5/ESXi 3.5 or ESX 4.0/ESX 4.1 configuration.

ESXi

For ESXi, the upgrade to ESXi 4.1 preserves almost all configuration data, including your networking, security,

and storage configuration. The only configuration not preserved is related to licensing while doing upgrade

from 3.5 to 4.1, because a new ESXi 4.1 license is required after the upgrade.

vSphere Upgrade Guide

58 VMware, Inc.