Patching the vCenter 6.x Appliance

With the latest version of the vCenter Appliance (vCSA) there is a new process to patching the appliance. Gone is the old Web UI of the 5.x era. The new process isn’t anything to be scared about though and should be familiar to most Admins and techs. Instead of the old web interface the upgrade process is basically just to attach the patch ISO and run a few commands via the console or SSH.

While researching the proces to update my own server however I came across a few unclear instructions concerning the process. I worked out what I needed to do after a few searches and a couple KB’s. Most of this guide will be a rehash of others and the official instructions but I will be including a few clarifications as well as some visual representations of the process to help those that got a little confused by the regular instructions.

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Windows/Office Digital River Links Updates [11/23/14]

I’ve  made some updates to the Windows/Office Digital River Links page to correct some broken links. Microsoft is currently in the process of migrating from their old Digital River servers to Azure. Due to that change many of the links are being changed in addition to some products being phased out. I’ll try to keep up with the changes but if I miss something just let me know. I will also be looking into a cleaner download interface so you’re not assaulted with a page full of links. The goal is a dropdown interface where you can just select your product and language and get your links. Going forward, this post will serve as the page for updates and contact for the Microsoft links.

Now as for the links themselves, I’ve made a few changes to how they are presented. For the most part they will remain the same but with the addition of alternative version and download links. For most people you can just download the latest version link but I’ll keep old versions linked for those who need them. Since this page is the second most popular page on the site I’m going to give it a little more attention and spruce it up.

Finally, a thanks to heidoc.net who figured out the change to the link structure and serve as the base source for links.

Windows/Office Digital River Links

Todo [11/23/14]:

  • Fix Broken links – Ongoing
  • Add additional alternative links
  • Clean up link presentation

Manually upgrading ESXi 5.0 to ESXi 5.1

I finally got around to updating my ESXi server today. Since I don’t have the hardware to run vCenter and thus do not use it I had to do it the manual way. This method involves connecting via SSH but is relatively straightforward.

  1. Download the update from VMware. The following link should take you directly to your My VMware page: VMware
    1. The file should be named VMware-ESXi-<version>-depot.zip
  2. Suspend or shutdown any running VM’s and put the system into Maintainence mode.
  3. The next step is to enable SSH on your ESXi Server by going to Configuration > Security Profile > Properties. Start the SSH service and close the popup.
  4. From there you’ll want to upload the VMware-ESXi-<version>-depot.zip we downloading earlier to the server
  5. Once the zip has been uploaded, open Putty or your preferred SSH client and connect to the ESXi server.
  6. Log into the server from SSH and run the following command where <datastore> is the location of the zip we uploaded earlier and <version> is the version number of the file (in this case, ESXi-5.1.0-799733).
    1. esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/VMware-ESXi-<version>-depot.zip -p ESXi-<version>-standard
  7. Once the process is finished reboot the sever. If the update was successful take the server our of Maintainence mode, and resume your VM’s.

You’ll probably have to update VMware Tools for your VM’s but your server should now be running properly on 5.1 ( or whatever version you upgraded to, assuming the command isn’t changed/removed).

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