Easy ESXi Patch Updates

If you are not familiar with v-front.de and you have a ESXi servers, you are really doing yourself a dis-service.  v-front.de maintains a repository of all ESXi updates and makes it very easy for you to update your servers when the newest patches come out.

Lately I have been having a series of interested GUI crashes with ESXi no matter what OS or Browser I use.  Knowing I was a bit behind on patches, I decided to update.

From their patching site I was able to grab the latest software profile and install it.  The steps are easy to do this and I will detail it here.

1. 1.  Enable the SSH Shell for your ESXi Host. At the Host Tab, click Actions -> Services – Enable Secure Shell (SSH).
   2. Going to the patching site and clicking on the latest update, v-front.de lists us the steps how to update our host.
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.5.0-20170404001-standard
-d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient
   3. Reboot and then verify that the vibs have updated
      [root@esxi:~] esxcli software vib list | grep esx-base
      esx-base                       6.5.0-0.19.5310538                    VMware    VMwareCertified     2017-05-13
      [root@esxi:~] esxcli software vib list | grep esx-ui
      esx-ui                         1.18.0-5270848                        VMware    VMwareCertified     2017-05-13
      [root@esxi:~] esxcli software vib list | grep vsan
      vsan                           6.5.0-0.19.5310540                    VMware    VMwareCertified     2017-05-13
      vsanhealth                     6.5.0-0.19.5310541                    VMware    VMwareCertified     2017-05-13