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  • 1.  ESXi Offline Patching Advice

    Posted Sep 30, 2022 09:49 AM

    Hi, I have an offline vSphere environment running ESXi 7.0U2 & I need to bring this up to the latest version (ESXi 7.0U3g) and was wondering if anyone could offer advice on the best approach to achieve this.  VCSA’s are already patched so it’s just the ESXi hosts I have left to do.

    I can’t use the standard predefined baselines (Host Security Patches & Critical Host Patches) as the vCenter is offline and can’t pull down any updates.  I can manually perform downloads from Customer Connect from another machine & import into vCenter. 

    There seems to be various options (vCLM, ESXCLI, baseline patching, image patching, depot files, ISO files) and was looking for guidance as to the best approach to achieve the end result.  

    Thanks



  • 2.  RE: ESXi Offline Patching Advice

    Posted Sep 30, 2022 03:10 PM

    Hey  ,

    Download ISO with ESXi 7.0U3g, upload to vCenter, and create a new baseline with the new ISO. Run update as normal.  



  • 3.  RE: ESXi Offline Patching Advice

    Posted Sep 30, 2022 03:24 PM

    Thanks, this seems to be the best option although it would have to be the OEM custom image for ESXi and the hardware vendor has released up to ESXi 7.0 U3f.  It's not quite ESXi 7.0 U3g however it's close enough.  



  • 4.  RE: ESXi Offline Patching Advice

    Posted Sep 30, 2022 06:07 PM

    Hardware vendors usually support the vanilla VMware patches for a given "Update" version/build.
    So what you want to do, is to patch the host to the latest U3 patch using the vendor image/bundle, and then apply the latest VMware patch.

    André



  • 5.  RE: ESXi Offline Patching Advice

    Posted Oct 03, 2022 09:52 AM

    Another option - sorry missed to mention that in my previous reply - is to use vLCM.

    Assuming that you have similar hosts in the cluster, you can switch the update method to vLCM, and create a vLCM image that contains the different pieces like the latest VMware patch, the vendor AddOn for this version, and - if required - any additionally required components.

    vLCM allow you to upload the required packages to the vLCM depot up front, so that this can be done without vCenter Server having Internet access.

    André