Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager provides information about installing, configuring, and using VMware® vSphere Update Manager to scan and remediate the objects in your vSphere environment. It also describes the tasks that you can perform to update your vSphere inventory objects and make them compliant against attached baselines and baseline groups.

For scanning and remediation, Update Manager works with the following ESXi versions:

  • For VMware Tools and virtual machine hardware upgrade operations, Update Manager works with 6.0, ESXi 6.5, and ESXi 6.7.
  • For ESXi host patching operations, Update Manager works with ESXi 6.0, ESXi 6.5, and ESXi 6.7.
  • For ESXi host upgrade operations, Update Manager works withESXi 6.0, ESXi 6.5, and their respective Update releases.

Intended Audience

This information is intended for anyone who wants to install, upgrade, migrate, or use Update Manager. The information is written for experienced Windows or Linux system administrators who are familiar with virtual machine technology and data center operations.

vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client

Instructions in this guide reflect the vSphere Client (an HTML5-based GUI). You can also use the instructions to perform the tasks by using the vSphere Web Client (a Flex-based GUI).

Tasks for which the workflow differs significantly between the vSphere Client and the vSphere Web Client have duplicate procedures that provide steps according to the respective client interface. The procedures that relate to the vSphere Web Client, contain vSphere Web Client in the title.

Note: In vSphere 6.7 Update 1, almost all of the vSphere Web Client functionality is implemented in the vSphere Client. For an up-to-date list of any remaining unsupported functionality, see Functionality Updates for the vSphere Client.

Adobe Flash Player End of Life

Adobe Flash Player went End of Life (EOL) on Dec 31, 2020.The deprecation of the Flash Player impacts Update Manager installations on Windows with which you can only use the Flash-based vSphere Web Client in earlier vSphere releases..

Starting with vSphere 6.7 Update 3m, however, you can use the vSphere Client with Update Manager that runs on Windows. The installation process, system requirements, and all prerequisites remain unchanged.

For detailed information about the deprecation of Adobe Flash Player and the impact on different VMware products, see the VMware knowledge base article at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/78589.