Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
You rely heavily on scripting to manage your environment, and you would like to take
advantage of tools that don't need PowerShell, such as the PowerCLI toolset that VMware
offers.
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You don't want to use VUM for host upgrades because you choose to always run fresh host
rebuilds when required.
You already have kick-start scripts, PowerShell post-install scripts, host proi les, and EDA/
UDA tools, or you want to set up an Auto Deploy server to control the installation and
upgrading of your hosts.
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So, what alternatives are available?
Upgrading and Patching Hosts
To upgrade your legacy ESX or ESXi hosts to vSphere 5.5,
you have two non-VUM options. You can run through an interactive install from the ESXi 5.5
ISO media, choosing an in-place upgrade. Or you can run a kick-start scripted upgrade along
with the same ESXi 5.5 media to perform an unattended upgrade. No command-line utility
can upgrade an older ESX or ESXi host to 5.5.
For upgrades from ESXi 5.0 or 5.1 to newer versions, you can likewise use an interac-
tive or unattended upgrade. If you have used VMware's Auto Deploy technology to roll
out vSphere, then you will be able to leverage this tool to upgrade or patch it to the latest
updates. ESXi 5.
x
hosts can also be patched and upgraded with the vCLI command-line
esxcli software vib tool.
The esxupdate and vihostupdate tools are no longer supported for ESXi 5.
x
updates.
Upgrading VMs
Without VUM, upgrading VM hardware can only be done via the vSphere
Client. If the hosts are connected to vCenter, then your connected client can manually
upgrade the hardware. You must shut down the VMs yourself and initialize each upgrade.
Even without vCenter you can still upgrade each VM by connecting your client straight at the
host. Similarly, VMware Tools can be upgraded in each guest OS manually from within the
VM's console. You must mount VMware Tools from your vSphere Client.
The vmware-vmupgrade.exe tool should not be used to upgrade VMs anymore.
vCenter Support Tools
In addition to VUM, the vCenter Windows installation DVD and the vCSA include a handful
of other useful support tools. Figure 4.38 shows the installable Support Tools options available
from the DVD.
ESXi Dump Collector
The ESXi Dump Collector is a centralized service that can receive and store memory dumps
from ESXi servers should they crash unexpectedly. These memory dumps occur when an ESXi
host suffers what is known as a purple screen of death (PSOD), analogous to the Windows blue
screen of death (BSOD) or a Linux kernel panic. The kernel grabs the contents of memory and
dumps
them to nonvolatile disk storage before the server reboots. This allows VMware support
