Installation guide

If FT is turned on for any of the virtual machines on hosts within a cluster, you should select to temporarily

turn off FT before performing any Update Manager operations on the cluster. If FT is turned on for any of the

virtual machines on a host, Update Manager does not remediate that host. You should remediate all hosts in

a cluster with the same updates, so that FT can be re-enabled after the remediation, because a primary virtual

machine and a secondary virtual machine cannot reside on hosts of different ESX/ESXi version and patch level.

Perform an Orchestrated Upgrade of Hosts Using vSphere Update Manager

You can use Update Manager to perform orchestrated upgrades of the ESX/ESXi hosts in your vSphere

inventory by using a single upgrade baseline, or by using a baseline group.

This workflow describes the overall process to perform an orchestrated upgrade of the hosts in your vSphere

inventory. Update Manager 5.0 supports host upgrades to ESXi 5.0 for hosts that are running ESX/ESXi 4.x.

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

NOTE The last two steps in this procedure are alternatives. Choose one or the other.

Prerequisites

Make sure your system meets the requirements for vCenter Server 5.0, ESXi 5.0, and Update Manager 5.0.

See “Update Manager Hardware Requirements,” on page 25

Install or upgrade vCenter Server to version 5.0. See Chapter 4, “Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.0,” on

page 27.

Install or upgrade vSphere Update Manager to version 5.0. See Chapter 5, “Upgrading Update

Manager,” on page 69.

Procedure

1 Configure Host Maintenance Mode Settings on page 97

ESX/ESXi host updates might require that the host enters maintenance mode before they can be applied.

Update Manager puts the ESX/ESXi hosts in maintenance mode before applying these updates. You can

configure how Update Manager responds if the host fails to enter maintenance mode.

2 Configure Cluster Settings on page 98

For ESX/ESXi hosts in a cluster, the remediation process can run either in a sequence or in parallel. Certain

features might cause remediation failure. If you have VMware DPM, HA admission control, or Fault

Tolerance enabled, you should temporarily disable these features to make sure that the remediation is

successful.

3 Enable Remediation of PXE Booted ESXi 5.0 Hosts on page 99

You can configure Update Manager to let other software initiate remediation of PXE booted ESXi 5.x

hosts. The remediation installs patches and software modules on the hosts, but typically the host updates

are lost after a reboot.

4 Import Host Upgrade Images and Create Host Upgrade Baselines on page 99

You can create upgrade baselines for ESX/ESXi hosts with ESXi 5.x images that you import to the

Update Manager repository.

5 Create a Host Baseline Group on page 100

You can combine one host upgrade baseline with multiple patch or extension baselines, or combine

multiple patch and extension baselines in a baseline group.

6 Attach Baselines and Baseline Groups to Objects on page 101

To view compliance information and remediate objects in the inventory against specific baselines and

baseline groups, you must first attach existing baselines and baseline groups to these objects.

vSphere Upgrade

96 VMware, Inc.