Add HP or Dell drivers to VMware Update Manager (VUM)

HP has created a vSphere Installation Bundle (VIB) depot for all sort of important HP driver bundles for VMware vSphere 5 and higher. The VIP depot contains:

    • HP ESXi 5.0 Management Providers bundle – includes the latest HP Common Information Model (CIM) Providers, HP Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) driver, HP Compaq ROM Utility (CRU) driver, and the new HP Agentless Management Service (AMS).
    • HP ESXi 5.0 Utilities bundle – ESXCLI utilities such as HPBOOTCFG (boot order configuration),HPONCFG (remote iLO configuration) and HPACUCLI (Smart Array reporting and configuration)
    • HP ESXi 5.0 NMI bundle – Non Maskable Interrupt (NMI) driver used to write VMware® errors to the Insight Management Log (IML)
    • HP Agentless Management Service Offline Bundle – a service that provides support for Agentless Management and Active Health. Agentless Management Service provides a wider range of server information (e.g. OS type and version, installed applications, IP addresses) allowing customers to complement hardware management with OS information and alerting. Agentless Management provides Integrated Lights Out (iLO) based robust management without the complexity of OS-based agents. Active Health provides 24×7 mission control for servers, delivering maximum uptime through automated monitoring, diagnostics and alerting.
    • Device Drivers as used in the HP Customized VMware images
    • Latest ProLiant Server and option firmware and driver version recipe

The VIB depot can be used by the following tools:

  • VMware Update Manager (VUM)
  • ESXCLI
  • ImageBuilder

With the HP VIB depot integration for example in VUM there is no need to download and install the bundles manually. In this blog post I explain how to add the HP VIB depot to VMware Update Manager (VUM) by using the following steps:

Add the VIB Depot to VUM

  • Open the vCenter Client
  • Select under Solution and Application in the main screen of the vCenter client – Update Manager
  • Select configuration
  • In the Download sources select – Add Download Source
  • In Source URL use:
    • For HP Updates: http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/index.xml
    • For Dell Updates: http://vmwaredepot.dell.com/index.xml
  • Press OK
  • Select – Download Now to update the baseline

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Create a new Baseline

  • Select the Baselines and Groups tab
  • Create
  • Baseline Name  – HP Updates
  • Baseline Type – Host Extension
  • Extensions to Add – Select the extensions you need. In this example I selected the following extensions:
    • hpnmi for ESXi 5.0 v1.3
    • HP ESXi 5.0 Complete Bundle Update 1.3
    • HP ESXi 5.0 Management Bundle 1.2-26
    • HP Utility Bundle ESXi 5.0 v 1.2

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  • Finish

Attach the baseline and remediate

  • Attach the baseline to the cluster

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  • Select the baseline and scan for patches and extensions
  • The HP bundles that are missing are listed

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  • Use Remediate to install the HP bundles

When the hosts are rebooted and the remediation is finished, the Host Compliance overview is 100%.

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Using the  HP VIB depot is great way of keep your HP server up-to-date with the latest HP bundles.

More information can be found HP VIB bundle site found here.

Update July 20 2012 : Viktor van den Berg tested the above configuration and found out that this only works with new  installations. For existing installation you need to create an additional Host Patch Baseline. Viktor explains this on his cool blog found here here.

Related posts:

  1. Ways to patch your VMware ESX(i) hosts
  2. VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 is now available
  3. Customize the VMware ESXi 5 installation media by adding the latest patches using Image Builder
  4. Site Recovery Manager (SRM) Update 1 released
  5. ESX 3.5 Update 2 and ESXi 3.5 Update 2 issue with product license to expire

12 thoughts on “Add HP or Dell drivers to VMware Update Manager (VUM)”

  1. Good article. A question for you, if I use the HP vsphere builds do I need to install these vib bundles? I would suspect you don’t but it would be good to know either way.

    Thanks David

  2. @David, The HP build of VMware vSphere can contain old drivers. By adding the HP VIB depot to VUM you can easily keep them up-to-date

  3. Hi Ivo! I’ve read your article and was configuring this option in VUM today. As far as I know the Host Extension baseline (as described in your article) will do the initial installation but will not update the HP drivers when an update comes available, I think you have to create an additional host patch baseline for this. I’ve written an article about this (http://www.viktorious.nl/2012/07/17/updating-your-hp-drivers-with-vmware-update-manager/), but I am curious what your idea is about this?

    Are still running VMware updates as well in vSphere, or only the HP updates?

    Best regards – Viktor

  4. Hi Victor. I tested this with new installations only. I didn’t know this. For customers we use VUM for HP and VMware updates. Thanks for the update! I add your link to the article today.

  5. Hi Ivo,

    I’m a bit confused. Why do you install four bundles? Doesn’t the “HP ESXi 5.0 Complete Bundle Update 1.3” contain everything. I thought that’s what complete means…

    /Mario

  7. Great article!

    I am running the free ESXi version on a DL380 G5 server.
    The free version does not come with VMware Update Manager.

    I searched your site and Google but did not find a good solution yet.
    I found some links for downloading packages and installing from CLI, but those packages where for 5.0 and not 5.1.
    Do you know where to download a package for 5.1?

  8. We tested this out – and despite it download and installing the various bundles – it does not update the device drivers. We confirmed this by documenting the pre-patch driver version, and post patch – and they do not get updated.

  12. I have added URL http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/index.xml in VUM — it shows connected — however when I try to download the patches it fails

    In the log file it is mentioned “”Retrying\ndownloading metadata for file hpq-index.xml: failed to download metadata index file: http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/hpq/hpq-index.xml\nError download ESX 4x updates from http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/index.xml: File download error: Failed to load xml, C:\TEMP\vcifmnsnakj.tmp : code: -1072896636, DTD is prohibited. . RetryingFile download error: Failed to load xml, C:\TEMP\vcifmnsnakj.tmp : code: -1072896636, DTD is prohibited. . RetryingFile download error: Failed to load xml, C:\TEMP\vcifmnsnakj.tmp : code: -1072896636, DTD is prohibited. . Retrying\ndownloading metadata for file hpq-index.xml: failed to download metadata index file: http://vibsdepot.hpe.com/hpq/hpq-index.xml“””

    any suggestion

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