VMTS Patch Manager

Some times you run across applications that makes your work as a system administrator that much easier, and last night VMTS Patch Manager really came to the rescue. Due to some problems encountered during the day, I had to reboot one of our ESX hosts and decided it would be a good time to do another patch run and get my ESX hosts updated.

Normally I've done patching the hard way (which by the way is way easier in ESX 3.x compared to 2.x), which basically consists of downloading the patches from VMware onto a http or ftp reposiitory, and then using esxupdate, from the host, to fetch the updates and apply them to the host. You also need to open up the builtin firewall and put your hosts in maintenance mode. If you want all the details, have a look at the Patch Management for ESX Server 3 PDF from VMWare. In itself this is a pretty straight forward job, but it does require that you keep track of the updates manually and apply them manually.

VMware will release a new VMware Update Manager with the new 3i and 3.5 versions, but for now there is no real automation tool provided with the stock Virtual Infrastructure 3 package. As is natural, many administrators deploy scripted solutions to manage the task of updating their hosts and have successfully been able to automate patch deployment that way, but there is a tool freely available that takes care of all this in one single package.

VMTS Patch Manager provides both a way to download all available patches into a local repository and then scan your hosts to see which patches are required. If there are any that needs to be deployed, it will take care of that for you as well. It can put your hosts in maintenance mode, do the required firewall changes and apply the patches. I successfully patched both our hosts, by using the patch manager, last night without any problems.

VMTS Patch Manager can also do upgrades like upgrading your ESX 3.0 hosts to the latest 3.0.2 version and then apply any patches that has been released since the 3.0.2 release. The tool itself works like any other Windows application, and it really does make the job of maintaining your ESX server patch levels current.

So, until ESX 3i and 3.5 is available, VMTS Patch Manager seems to be the ultimate way of maintaining your ESX host patches! Just remember to update your Virtual Center to the latest version before you attempt to upgrade your ESX version!

Thank you Massimiliano Daneri, your tool provides a great service that for now is missing from the core ESX product!

Posted by Christian Mohn aka h0bbel