How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager (thanks @ccolotti)

So I won’t forget: How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager.

It describes how to:

1. enable SSH on your ESXi host
2. download the patches directly from the VMware Patch Portal
3. copy them to on your ESXi host using an SCP compatible tool (FileZilla or WinSCP will do fine) to a mounted data store (the ESXi image will be tool small for it)
4. collect to the ESXi console using SSH
5. run this esxcli command:
   esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/[DATASTORE]/[PATCH_FILE].zip
6. Remove the patch file from the datastore after patching

Thanks Chris Colotti for publishing this!

–jeroen

via How To Patch vSphere 5 ESXi Without Update Manager • Chris Colotti’s Blog.