Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
you to specify the schedule for patch downloads as well as gives you the opportunity to
coni gure email notii cations.
Email Notifications Require SMTP Server Configuration
To receive any email notifi cations that you might confi gure in the Schedule Update Download
Wizard, you must also confi gure the SMTP server in the vCenter Server settings, accessible from
the Administration menu of the vSphere Client.
Notii cation Check Schedule
VUM regularly checks for notii cations about patch
recalls, patch i xes, and other alerts. The schedule for checking for these notii cations
is coni gured in this area. As in the Download Schedule area, you can click the Edit
Notii cations link in the upper-right corner of the window to edit the schedule VUM uses
to check for notii cations.
VM Settings
Under VM Settings, vSphere administrators coni gure whether to use VM
snapshots when applying upgrades to VMs. As you'll see in Chapter 7, “Ensuring High
Availability and Business Continuity,” snapshots provide the ability to capture a VM's
state at a given point and then roll back to that captured state if so desired. Having the
ability, via a snapshot, to undo the installation of a driver from a VMware Tools upgrade
can be incredibly valuable. Be careful not to keep the snapshot for an unnecessary length
of time because it can affect the VM's performance and, more important, can cause stor-
age issues because it can grow and i ll your datastore unexpectedly.
Figure 4.11 shows the default settings that enable snapshots.
Figure 4.11
By default, VM
snapshots are
enabled for use
with VUM.
ESX Host/Cluster Settings
The ESX Host/Cluster Settings area provides controls for
i ne-tuning how VUM handles maintenance mode operations. Before an ESX/ESXi host
