Comments on: Upgrading VMware ESX or ESXi using vSphere Host Update Utility

By: EUK 5.1 Host Utility vSphere 4.0 – NetAppSky

EUK 5.1 Host Utility vSphere 4.0 – NetAppSky — Sat, 15 Jan 2011 05:35:42 +0000

[...] Click here to view VMWare Host Utility for vSphere 4.0 Update 2 [...]

By: Nigel Boulton

Nigel Boulton — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 07:48:48 +0000

Just a quick follow up…

Bojan, thanks for the suggestion. Yes, Update Manager is great, but in my case perhaps a bit of an overkill for a single standalone host..?

Turned out I had some bad RAM in my host. Replacing it cured this and a number of other weird and wonderful (intermittent) error messages, crashes and VMs either blue screening or refusing to boot. Good old Memtest to the rescue!

By: Bojan Pogorevc

Bojan Pogorevc — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 13:53:52 +0000

Simon, hello.

Funny thing from Vmware.. you can update esxi servers, but you can’t update esx servers. Great for upgrading servers, currently upgrading our 10 hosts and aprox. 200 servers .. real deal But I managed also to establish Update Manager and it works like charm. Nigel, you should try it.

By: Nigel Boulton

Nigel Boulton — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 18:17:52 +0000

Great article Simon, thanks.

I’m just trying to patch my ESXi 4 U1 host using the method you describe above, but it fails with a strange error every time:

“The patch operation has failed with this error: The patch metadata or binaries may be corrupted. This can be caused by following reasons: files are incorrectly signed, signed with incorrect keys, or local data corruption. Downloading the patches again from the depot server may solve this problem. Please check the log files of host agent, vpxa and esxupdate for more details”

Much online searching has turned up nothing useful – any ideas?

Thanks!

By: `ariel

`ariel — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:37:35 +0000

Yes it helps, i was asking that because few weeks ago i was trying to update my ESXi and it fails, at the point the ESXi didn’t have internet connection and that was the firs thing i notice and stop doing the update.

I will try again and post it back! Thanks!!

By: Kiwi Si

Kiwi Si — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 13:17:40 +0000

Hi Ariel,

When you first start the Host Update Utility it downloads any patches from the VMware Patch Repository to the PC/server running the utility. When you go to start the patching it at this point uploads the patches from the PC running the utility to the ESXi host.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Simon