VMware Update Manager – Part Six: PowerCLI and Update Manager Utility

In order to modify or automate VMware Update Manager (VUM) behaviour the VMware vSphere Update Manager PowerCLI (VUM PowerCLI) and the VMware Update Manager Utility (VUM Utility) tools can be used.

VUM PowerCLI provides a set of cmdlets for performing VUM administration takes, such as creating basleines, attaching baselines, scanning virtual machines, staging patches, remediating objects and downloading patches on a system where vSphere PowerCLI is installed.

To retrieve a lit of all VUM PowerCLI commands from the vSphere PowerCLI console, we can run the following cmdlet:

Get-Command -PSSnapin VMware.VumAutomation

In order to create a new patch baseline we can invoke the following script block:

Import-Module VMware.VumAutomation | Out-Null 

Connect-VIServer vcenter.dean.local 

$Patches = Get-Patch -Severity Critical 

$FixedBaseline = New-PatchBaseline -Static "Critical Patches" -IncludePatch $Patches

In order to attach the baseline created above to an ESXi host system, we can invoke the following script block

Attach-Baseline -Baseline $FixedBaseline -Entity esxi1.dean.local

The VMware Update Manager (VUM) Utility can be used to configure settings that following the initial VUM install without having to reinstall VUM, for example:

Proxy settings
Database user credentials
vCenter Server IP address or hostname
SSL certificate

The VUM utility is available by browsing to ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\VMwareUpdateManagerUtility.exe’ and when prompted specify the login credentials. Once the configuration settings have been modified a restart of the VUM service will be required to apply the changes.