How to update host from vcenter when host needs to be in maintenance mode

[dufour]

Hi, I have a 5.5 host with 3 VMs (2 production servers and 1 vcenter server). Now all documentation I see to update the host from the update manager in vcenter is pretty straight forward. The thing I don't understand is before you can remediate, the esx host needs to be in maintenance mode, which means no VMs up, including the vcenter server which is the only way you can right click on host and choose remediate. Now how can I remediate if the server is in maintenance mode and my vcenter server is down?

I have vsphere client installed on my laptop, version 5.5 but from it, I don't have the option to remediate. How can I upate my esxi 5.5 host?

Thanks

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

With only a single host in place and vCenter Server running as a VM on this host, you cannot use Update Manager. Your options are to either interactively update the host using a CD, or to update/patch the host from the command line using esxcli.

André

[crawfordm]

Enable local and remote tech support so you can SSH to the server.  Shut down all the VM's and put the host into maintenance mode.  Upload the patches to a datastore the server can reach.  Then SSH to the server and update it via the CLI.  This article might explain it better - VMware KB: Installing patches on an ESXi 5.x host from the command line

[dufour]

Thanks for the answer.

Regards