Quick and Dirty VMware ESX Patching

On the ESX console, do the following:

  • Read the documentation for each patch.
  • Group patches that can be installed together into a directory, possibly an NFS mount available on all your ESX hosts.
  • Cd into the patch directory and untar the patches:

    for i in `ls *.tgz`; do
    tar -xvzf $i
    done

  • Install the patches:

    for i in `ls`; do
    if [ -d $i ]; then
    cd $i
    esxupdate --noreboot update
    cd ..
    fi
    done

  • Reboot.