Hi Darragh: We really don't have an ESXI update policy, it's a whenever I get around to it sort of thing. We have ESX hosts located all over the world, and many of them don't have other hosts I can VMotion machines off to or anying like that. Some of those hosts actually have never had updates applied because I can't get a good time to shut down the VMs on them and install patches. The hosts in our main datacenters do get updated every few months, and at that point I just install all available updates. I honestly haven't really gotten the Update Manager interface to work at all with Window-Eyes, so I use an Update Manager module for PowerCLI. That works pretty well, but as I said it doesn't get me the level of control as the GUI updatemanager has, but oh well. We've not had any issues yet. On a similar note, what version of VC are you guys running? Any plans to go to VC 5.1 anytime soon? Have you had a play with the web client? Ryan -----Original Message----- From: Blind-sysadmins [mailto:blind-sysadmins-bounces@lists.hodgsonfamily.org] On Behalf Of Darragh OHeiligh Sent: Monday, October 01, 2012 7:10 AM To: Blind sysadmins list Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] ESXI update policies. Hello, I was just wondering, Do you have a policy for updating eSXI hosts? Drawing from their recommendations at the following KB article it would seem that VMware suggest that updates are applied very quickly after release however as we all know, What software prociders suggest and what is viable are two very different things. I applied a patch on Friday to an ESXI cluster that was only four days old. Quite rightly, it was flagged this morning by someone else here as being a possible risk. http://www.vmware.com/support/policies/upgrade.html It just got me thinking, the list for checking and unchecking updates isn't the cleanest thing out there. It's very easy to let an update through that is only out a few days. 1. Do you bother checking release dates? 2. If so, what is your policy? Do you leave updates to settle for a month? 3. If you don't install some updates, What method have you developed to distinguish bleeding edge updates? Thanks. I'm going to be asked about this in a meeting on wednesday so it would be interesting to have others opinions. Of course, I should have caught the patch that was four days old so, it's entirely my fault but as luck would have it, it hasn't caused any problems. Their arguement will be, well, it could have. It hasn't been out in the wild long enough to be tested by the eSXI user base. Regards Darragh Ó Héiligh Fujitsu Offices of the Houses of the Oireachtas, Fredrick Building, South Fredrick Street, Dublin2 Telephone: +353 (1) 618 3559 Email: darragh.oheiligh@oireachtas.ie Internet: http://www.oireachtas.ie Oireachtas email policy and disclaimer. http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/about/oireachtasemailpolicyanddisclaimer... Beartas ríomhphoist an Oireachtais agus séanadh. http://www.oireachtas.ie/parliament/ga/eolas/beartasriomhphoistanoireachtais... _______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins