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.

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 is now available

 

 VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 is now available. This patch resolves the following issues:

      • After upgrading Cisco Nexus 1000V VSM to the latest version, you might not be able to patch the kernel of ESX hosts attached to the vDS (KB 1015717)

        Upgrading Cisco Nexus 1000V VSM to the latest version upgrades the Cisco Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM) on ESX hosts attached to the vDS. Subsequently, from the same vSphere Client instance, you might not be able to use a host patch baseline to apply patches to the ESX vmkernel64 or ESXi firmware of hosts attached to the vDS. Applying patches to ESX vmkernel64 or ESXi firmware requires that you include the compatible Cisco Nexus 1000V VEM patch in the baseline. However, this patch might not be available for selection in the Update Manager New Baseline wizard or in the Update Manager patch repository.

      • Upgrade of Cisco Nexus 1000V version 4.0(4)SV1(1) to version 4.0(4)SV1(2) with Update Manager might fail for hosts with certain patch levels (KB 1017069)

        If you are using Cisco Nexus 1000V version 4.0(4)SV1(1), and the ESX patch bulletins ESX400-200912401-BG or ESXi400-200912401-BG are installed on the host, you might not be able to upgrade to Cisco Nexus 1000V version 4.0(4)SV1(2).

      • Scanning of hosts in a cluster and staging of patches to hosts in a cluster might take a long time to finish

        The scanning and staging operations of hosts in a cluster run sequentially. If a cluster contains a lot of hosts, scanning and staging patches might take a long time to be completed. Scanning and staging of hosts in a cluster run concurrently on all of the selected hosts in the cluster.

For details regarding these new fixes, please refer to the release notes.

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 Patch 1 is available for download.

VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0 Update 1 is required for installation of this patch.