I recently had the the great, great pleasure of discovering VMware Update Manager or VUM but as with most things in my environment, it wasn’t a straightforward install. VUM is only made for Windows but can be installed without a Windows vCenter install- score.
Problem #1 –
My first issue was simply finding the bloody installer. As it turns out, it’s packaged with vCenter. The installer can be found in
\VMware VIM\updateManager\VMware vSphere Update Manager
Problem #2 –
A handful of “Must be installed on WS2008 and above” and “Requires administrative privileges” standard Windows guff errors stopped me in my tracks. This is nothing to do with Windows version but rather Windows application. Despite plenty of educational licences, I’m a big fan on Linux and so only run Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials as a multipurpose box. That includes AD, and VUM won’t install on an AD controller.
Solution: install on another instance of Windows.
Problem #3 –
Given the above issue I decided this was a good time to setup a Windows cluster, and so set about making a WS 2012 virtual machine that would be dedicated to SQL Server. With the install completed, I setup a dedicated database for VUM and successfully tested access with a .udl file from another box. Yet from vCenter I was getting the following error
There was an error connecting to VMware vCenter Update Manager
:8084. Database temporarily unavailable or has network problems.
This issue was due to me using Windows Authentication on a remote server. To fix, on the VUM server, go to Start -> Run -> services.msc -> VMware vSphere Update Manager Service -> Log On. Select ‘This account:’ and enter the Windows username and password used to login to the remote SQL server. Restart the service when done.