Looks like Aaron's bladevault.info site has been parked by GoDaddy and the previous content is no longer available. Aaaron has recently started contributing to http://blog.scottlowe.org. He has a couple of posts from the last 2 weeks there. maybe you can leave a comment for him on one of those posts inquiring about his older posts?

Thanks,

Rich

I've tried your links (http://www.bladevault.info…) and they only show “sponsored links”.

I would really like to read your tips and tricks regardind Update Manager !

Thank you,
Nicole Faust

Like Jason — I also have the plug-in issue. You mentioned once a month — Jason said “every few days”. Mine is AT LEAST every few days — usually every day. I generally just leave it disconnected until there are new updates and I am going to be using VUM. I do wish VMware would resolve this issue though.

One problem I have found with VUM is that if it can’t go into maintenance mode, the whole remediate hangs and eventually bombs. i.e. If a host can’t be Vmotioned for some reason, the maintenance mode process hangs and times out, and the remediate process bombs. It would be pretty nice if that were detected when the remediate is submitted.

When VUM first came out it was fast — now it can take several minutes just to scan a single host. This also makes the remediate process longer since it scans during that. I have seen other people complain about this on the VMware forums. I am not sure what update to VIC caused this — but somewhere along the line scans when from very fast to pretty slow. I even did a fresh install of VIC on a faster server and still see this behavior.

VUM is a good addition and I am confident Vmware will continue to make it better.

Like Jason — I also have the plug-in issue. You mentioned once a month — Jason said “every few days”. Mine is AT LEAST every few days — usually every day. I generally just leave it disconnected until there are new updates and I am going to be using VUM. I do wish VMware would resolve this issue though.

One problem I have found with VUM is that if it can’t go into maintenance mode, the whole remediate hangs and eventually bombs. i.e. If a host can’t be Vmotioned for some reason, the maintenance mode process hangs and times out, and the remediate process bombs. It would be pretty nice if that were detected when the remediate is submitted.

When VUM first came out it was fast — now it can take several minutes just to scan a single host. This also makes the remediate process longer since it scans during that. I have seen other people complain about this on the VMware forums. I am not sure what update to VIC caused this — but somewhere along the line scans when from very fast to pretty slow. I even did a fresh install of VIC on a faster server and still see this behavior.

VUM is a good addition and I am confident Vmware will continue to make it better.

Hey Rich – I have set up Update Manager for a number of customers and I have updated my site with tips and tricks related to Update Manager. Of particular note is how to tell Update Manager to not Download Windows and Linux Patches if you won’t be using them. Every single one I have set up so far has been ESX patching only. Enjoy!

http://www.bladevault.info/2008/09/29/vmware-update-manager-set-up-cheat-sheet/

http://www.bladevault.info/2008/09/30/how-to-start-a-vmware-update-manager-download-immediately/

http://www.bladevault.info/2008/09/30/how-to-configure-vmware-update-manager-to-only-download-esx-updates/

http://www.bladevault.info/2008/09/30/vmware-update-manager-configuration-best-practices/