One of the things I really like about the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) is the updating function. VMware Update manager is great for patching ESX hosts, but doesn’t cover the patching of vCenter – I imagine because VUM depends on vCenter – and updating the thing that makes the update thing work might be too many levels of vINCEPTION for even us to cope with! So historically, vCenter “updates” have taken the form of in-place upgrades using .ISO image in the case of the Windows vCenter – not so with the server appliance…
Previously, I’ve been just allowing these updates to happen automagically without my intervention – it’s just a not-at-home-lab so having automatic updates gives me one less thing to loose sleep over. However, I recently had cause to build out a new vSphere environment in my lab environment – and knowing the version I had was out of date (the 5.1 version as opposed to the 5.1.0b edition).
By default the VCSA is set to not to even check for updates. Personally, I would “Automatic check for updates”…
….so if you do log into the admin page you and check the “status” tab you will see updates are at least available. So below you can see that build 799730 is being superseded by build 947940
Clicking the Check Updates can be used if your not doing an automated check for updates, and of course “lnstall Updates” allows to force the update through…
A quick click at the “Details…” link on Status Tab will give you a bit more information. I find this update process much less hassle than the update process for the Windows version of vCenter…
Job Done!