In this excellent article Ivo Beerens explains how you can add the HP extensions to an ESXi installation using VMware Update Manager. By using the HP extensions you will benefit the optimized drivers and CIM providers for your HP hardware.
While configuring this feature I noticed that although the extensions are uploaded to the ESXi servers, the configured host extension baseline will not patch the drivers. It’s more or less a static baseline, which will only add the HP drivers to ESXi. You will need to create an additional host patch baseline which will update the HP drivers once installed (see also page 12 of this PDF, “Using VUM to keep HP servers up to date”). The steps to create this new patch baseline are:
First, create a new Host Patch baseline, make it a dynamic baseline.
Select HP as the Patch Vendor:
Note (update February 14th 2013): Don’t forget to select the ESXi version your running in your environment, otherwise Update Manager will generate errors.
In the next step all the HP patches are displayed. This list of patches is dynamic and will be updated in the future (it’s a dynamic host patch baseline after all…):
Just choose the default options in the next steps in the wizard and your baseline will be created and ready eventually. Now you can attach your baseline to your hosts/clusters, so the hosts will benefit this new patch baseline…which will update the HP software on your ESXi servers. Is that cool, or what?
The difference between an extension baseline and this patch baseline is that the latter one can be dynamic, while an extension baseline will be static (which is great for the initial configuration!).
You can also configure a scheduled task to automatically remediate the servers. Use the Scheduled Tasks feature in vCenter, add a new scheduled task and choose remediate:
Just follow the wizard to configure the scheduled task and you’re all set!
12 Comments
hw_doc
Hi,
we used HP’s customized ESXi installation media, but HP is not visible as a patch vendor in our vUM instance. Has anyone the same issue?
viktorious
Hi,
You have to add patch repository yourself. See the PDF mentioned in the article, or check Ivo’s article on this:
http://www.ivobeerens.nl/2012/07/17/add-hp-drivers-vib-to-vmware-update-manager-vum/
hw_doc
Great – this worked for me – thanks a lot, viktorious!
sanderdaems
Nice one, thanks Viktor
Eric van der Meer (vMeer-IT)
Hi Viktor,
Thanks for sharing this with us, but I would like to mention one thing in this configuration that you have to be aware of.
In the default baseline: ‘Non-Critical Host Patches’, by default all patch vendors are in the criteria. This will include Hewlett-Packard patches, so when you periodically run Update Manager and install the ‘Non-Critical patches’ you will install the Hewlett-Packard patches with it. I manually choose the patch vendors in the Non-Critical baseline and unselect Hewlett-Packard as the associated patch vendor for this baseline. With this configuration I’m able to decide when I install the HP patches, this is only usefull when you do use the default baselines and run the Non-Criticals…
Another advantage of this is that you can see the Host Compliance status separately between the Non-Critical and your Hewlett-Packard baseline, one can show you a compliant status and the HP baseline can show you non-compliant for example. This helps you keeping track on the compliant status of your environment.
Regards,
Eric van der Meer
viktorious
Hi Eric, a good addition to the article! Thanks for the comment.
Christian van Barneveld
Hi Viktor,
Thanks for sharing this!
Have you noticed that only the HP packages are updated, but not the device drivers? Everything is up to date, but the Emulex drivers are still on the old version and it seems that I have to import the VIB manually in VUM. When I import the HP custom image (depot.zip) in VUM the device drivers are updated succesfully.
Do you know if this is by design or do I mis something?
Regards,
Christian
topuli
if you want to update the device drivers too, just add an additional download source with the following source url
http://vibsdepot.hp.com/index-drv.xml
regards
t.
Derek
http://vibsdepot.hp.com/ says:
New host name: On November 1, 2015, HP vibsdepot will switch to a new host name of vibsdepot.hpe.com.
Please replace any use of vibsdepot.hp.com to the new vibsdepot.hpe.com after November 1, 2015. HP vibsdepot will be referred to as HPE vibsdepot as of November 1, 2015.
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