With the recent release of vCenter Server appliance 6.0 Update 1b support was added for patching your vCenter server appliance, making use of a URL within your company network. Before this patch your vCenter appliance would have to make a direct connection with the internet and download the patches from the VMware repository. Now with this change you will be able to download the patches on your workstation, place them on a webserver within your company netwerk and then apply the patches to your vCenter appliance.

To start things of with you will need to have your own web server, this can be either a Windows or Linux based server. After that you will need to download the zipped updated bundle from the vmware website. Once downloaded extract the files into your repository directory on the webserver, this should result in two subdirectories called “manifest” and “package-pool”.

After that you have two options in updating the vCenter appliance, either by the vCenter server appliance Management interface (VAMI) or through the use of the command line interface.

vCenter server appliance management interface:

  1. Open the management vCenter Virtual Appliance web interface on port 5480.
  2. In the Update tab, click Settings.
  3. Select Use Specified Repository.
  4. For the Repository URL, enter the URL of the repository you created. For example, if the repository directory is vc_update_repo, the URL should be similar to the following URL: http://web_server_name.your_company.com/vc_update_repo
  5. Click OK.
  6. Click Check Updates.
  7. Click Check URL.
  8. Under Available Updates, click Install Updates.
  9. Based on your requirement, select from the following options:
    • Install all updates.
    • Install third-party updates.

Command line interface:

  1. Access the appliance shell and log in as a user who has a super administrator (default root) role.
  2. To stage the patches included in a repository URL: software-packages stage –url http://web_server_name.your_company.com/vc_update_repo
  3. Install staged patches:  software-packages install –staged
  4. To reboot after patching if needed: reboot -r “patch reboot”

This update should keep your IT environment up to date and secure, even if your Update server doesn’t have internet access.