Investigating Alternative Update Options

In most circumstances, using the VUM tools in the vSphere Client is the easiest and most efficient method of keeping your hosts, VMs, and virtual appliances patched and at the latest, greatest level. However, there are sometimes circumstances where you want to look beyond the standard tools and investigate the alternatives. As you'll learn, vSphere can be updated in several other ways.

Using vSphere Update Manager PowerCLI

vSphere takes advantage of Microsoft's PowerShell scripting environment with the PowerCLI extensions that are discussed in Chapter 14, “Automating VMware vSphere.”

Without getting ahead of ourselves, it's worth noting the PowerCLI tools that are available to script many of VUM's functions. The VUM PowerCLI cmdlets cover the most common tasks like working with baselines, scanning, staging, and remediating vSphere objects. Figure 4.37 shows the list of cmdlets currently available.