VMware vCenter Update Manager provides a patch management framework for VMware vSphere. IT administrators can use it to patch and upgrade VMware ESX/ESXi hosts, apply patches to Windows and certain versions of Linux in virtual machines, upgrade VMware Tools and virtual hardware for virtual machines, and patch and upgrade virtual appliances. A new white paper, VMware vCenter Update Manager Performance and Best Practices, is now available.
In this paper, we discuss VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1 host deployment, latency, resource consumption, guest OS tuning, VM operations in high latency networks, the impact of on-access virus scanning, and host operations in WAN environments. We also provide performance tips to help customers tune the system for better performance, such as:
- Separate the Update Manager database from the vCenter database when there are 300+ virtual machines or 30+ hosts.
- Separate both the Update Manager server and the Update Manager database from the vCenter Server system and the vCenter Server database when there are 1000+ virtual machines or 100+ hosts.
- Make sure the Update Manager server host has at least 2GB of RAM to cache patch files in memory.
- Allocate separate physical disks for the Update Manager patch store and the Update Manager database.
- Deploy the Update Manager server close to the ESX hosts if possible. This reduces network latency and packet drops.
- On a high-latency network, powered-on virtual machine scans are preferred because they are not sensitive to network latency.
- Host operations in a slow network will take a long time. Refer to the white paper for the maximum time estimation. Don’t interrupt ongoing operations.
Please read the white paper for more performance tips with more details. You can download the full white paper from here.