Specification

Applying updates in a VMware vSphere environment
12 Dell EMC Best Practices for Running VMware ESXi 6.5 or Later Clusters on XC Series Appliances and XC Core
Systems | A03
3 Applying updates in a VMware vSphere environment
3.1 VMware Update Manager
You may use VMware Update Manager (VUM) to apply incremental updates in a Nutanix environment.
Nutanix supports the ability to patch upgrade ESXi hosts with versions that are greater than or released after
the Nutanix qualified version, but Nutanix might not have qualified those releases.
When implementing VUM, ensure the following restrictions apply:
• Ensure that you do not import any third-party patches into VUM.
• Ensure that you clear the Remove 3rd party add-ins option in the VUM interface.
If other issues occur with the upgrade process, an alert is raised in the Prism Alert dashboard. For further
information, refer to the vSphere Update manager Installation and Administration Guide
for instructions.
3.2 One-Click Upgrade process
Dell EMC recommends that ESXi host updates are applied through Prism’s One-Click feature, as this is a
cluster-aware process. Nutanix qualifies specific VMware ESXi hypervisor updates and provides a related
JSON metadata upgrade file on the Nutanix Support Portal for one-click upgrade through the Prism web
console Software Upgrade feature.
Dell EMC provides qualified ESXi binary files to Nutanix, and Nutanix in turn provide the related JSON
metadata upgrade files.
Prerequisites:
1. Log in to the Nutanix portal
with your credentials.
2. Go to Downloads > Hypervisor Details and download the JSON file for the ESXi release that you want
to apply to the cluster nodes.
3. Download the appropriate ESXi binary .zip file from the Dell support site
4. Run the Nutanix Cluster Checks (NCC) using one of the following methods:
a. From the Prism web console Health page, select Actions > Run Checks. Select All Checks
and click Run.
b. Log in to a Controller VM and use the ncc CLI.
nutanix@cvm$ ncc health_checks run_all
Note: If the check reports a status other than PASS, resolve the reported issues before proceeding. If you are
unable to resolve the issues, contact Dell Support for assistance.
5. Disable Admission Control within vCenter Server.
a. Right-Click on the cluster resource and select Settings.
b. Select Services > vSphere Availability > EDIT.
c. Select Admission Control > Define host failover capacity by and set it to Disabled.