vSphere 6.5 simplifies and enhances the capabilities for patching and upgrading ESXi hosts and vCSAs. vSphere 6.5 introduces a lot of new features and improvements, such as the vCSA with the integrated VUM, vCenter HA, and so on, that make migration to the latest release a recommended task.
The VUM service is now fully integrated in the vCSA and no longer requires an additional external Windows server. The embedded VUM can also benefit from the vCenter HA feature for redundancy. VUM is enabled by default and only a minor configuration is required to have a system ready to handle patches and upgrade tasks. This chapter will discuss how to patch ESXi hosts using the command line when no vCenter Servers are available in the network.
vSphere 6.5 includes a migration tool that allows administrators to easily and quickly upgrade from version 6.0 to 6.5. With the release of Update 1, now vSphere 6.0 Update 3 installations can also be upgraded to vSphere 6.5 Update 1.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
- Lifecycle management improvements in vSphere 6.5
- Patching ESXi hosts with the command line and VUM
- Patching vCenter Server using vCenter Server Appliance Web Console (VAMI) and vSphere Update Manager (VUM)
- Configuring VUM and baseline creation
- Upgrade workflow and procedures
- Migration from previous vSphere versions using the migration tool