I am new to VMWare. I have 2 ESXi 5.5 hosts with 2 virtual machines(WS 2008R2) on one and 1 virtual machine(WS2008R2) on the other. I have VMWare VCenter Server installed on one of the windows vms that has the 2 vms. Update Manager is installed on that windows vm also. I do not have centralized storage. These windows vms are production servers. I have never updated these host. They have over 200 updates.
Question: How do I go about updating these host? I know the windows server vms have to be shut down. If I shut down the vm with Update Manager on it, how will it update the host its on? Should I allow every update to update? If not, how do you chose which updates to update. Is there a way to move these vms around when you don't have centralize storage?
I have had these questions out there for 2 days and no one seems to be able to answer them.
Can someone answer this one question: Is it possible to update the ESXi host that vCenter server is install on, with some sort of schedule that will shut down the vms(even the one that vCenter is install on) and put it in to maintenance mode and run the updates on the ESXi host.
Ok, here is how I did it:
I cloned the vm with vCenter Server on it. I put the clone on the other host.
I changed the ip address of the original server before I shut it down. I deleted the dns entry on my dns server that pointed to it and flush the cache.
I booted the clone and change the ip address and rebooted.(It will not let you use the ip address of the original server, it still sees the ip address of that server on the network).
Make sure you give the vCenter Server services enough time to come up before you log on.
You will loose connectivity to the Update Manager Plugin because of the ip address change. Follow these kb articles to fix that-kb 1013222,kb 1014639,2007398. Did not have any trouble with the fixes.
Once you get Update Manager running you can scan and do the update for the host.
You have to do your normal shut down the vms and put in maintenance mode to update.
After that shut down the clone and delete it.
Bring up the original vCenter Server and change the ip and reboot.
I answered this in case someone else runs across this problem.