VMware Update Manager

[Norphy]

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of managing VMware and now I need to help manage it in my new job. We're running vSphere 5.5.

 

The vCenter database is running SQL Express and it's hit 4GB. I've pruned the vCenter database as much as possible but it's not that one that's causing the issue, it's the Update Manager one. However, I can't see a way to clean it.

 

According to Update Manager, there are still a boatload of patches for ESX 4, 5 and 5.1 so I figured clearing those out would trim the size of the database a little. Unfortunately there's no obvious way to do that.

 

So my questions are:

 

1) Can you safely trim the VUDB database? If so, how?

2) How you remove outdated updates from the Update Manager console?

 

Cheers

[Davit2005]

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of managing VMware and now I need to help manage it in my new job. We're running vSphere 5.5.

 

The vCenter database is running SQL Express and it's hit 4GB. I've pruned the vCenter database as much as possible but it's not that one that's causing the issue, it's the Update Manager one. However, I can't see a way to clean it.

 

According to Update Manager, there are still a boatload of patches for ESX 4, 5 and 5.1 so I figured clearing those out would trim the size of the database a little. Unfortunately there's no obvious way to do that.

 

So my questions are:

 

1) Can you safely trim the VUDB database? If so, how?

2) How you remove outdated updates from the Update Manager console?

 

Cheers

 

We had the same issue with vCenter and I'm pretty sure we upgraded the database to a new version of express that had a bigger limit folowing instruction/help from VMWare, there are a few registry keys that need to be changed somewhere I seem to remember

 

I'd suggest logging call with VMWare if you can

[kmount]

To be honest you could just uninstall update manager, nuke the db and install it again from scratch and it'll go away and download the necessary and scan the hosts.

 

An upgrade of SQL to 2008R2 to get the 10GB limit would be recommended in line with making sure the VMware side is compliant (i.e. patch levels of vCenter with SQL versions) with the interoperability matrix.

[Davit2005]

To be honest you could just uninstall update manager, nuke the db and install it again from scratch and it'll go away and download the necessary and scan the hosts.

 

An upgrade of SQL to 2008R2 to get the 10GB limit would be recommended in line with making sure the VMware side is compliant (i.e. patch levels of vCenter with SQL versions) with the interoperability matrix.

 

That is a posibility although all the patch,upgrade baselines and Configuration ESX Host/Cluster settings would need to be configured again, not a major issue depending on how complex the setup is. Take some screen shots if you are happy to do this. Alternatively if the vCenter is virtual you could always clone and then have the machine as a reference by disconnecting from the network etc..

[RobD]

You could try this: Clicky

 

Or download the latest version of esxi and I think you can do a in place upgrade with a DVD (or usb etc).

Edited August 2, 2016 by RobD