Continuing from the previous blog, where I showed how I installed Update Manager Download Service in my lab, this blog will focus on the setup and configuration of UMDS, using Apache to publish a repository, and finally setting up VMware LCM to use those files as a repository for updates. If you missed the previous blog, check it out here: https://mikewire.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=569

We’ll end up using a few of the vmware-umds commands here, and to reference basic commands, optional arguments and examples of syntax you can type in /usr/local/vmware-umds/bin --help

Note: as a shortcut, if in the /usr/local/vmware-udms/bin directory, one can run commands by using ./vmware-udms

Let’s get UMDS enabled…type in the following command: ./vmware-udms  -S –enable-host

I want to check out the current configuration, so I’ll use this command to check it: ./vmware-udms -G

URL’s are shown below as well as the versions for which the patch content will be downloaded, and you can see v6.7 is listed. Since I don’t have any v6.7 hosts, I’m going to remove that version from the enabled and downloaded content.

No problem…let’s use the following command, add the -S to set the configurations and -d to disable the host platform, like this: ./vmware-udms -S -d embeddedEsx-6.7.0-INTL

Now only ESX v7 and v8 patches will be downloaded, as seen below when listing the configuration again: ./vmware-udms -G

Ok, now let’s get some patches downloading…I typed in ./vmware-udms -D

This will trigger a download and cascade of text, patches will then be downloaded to the UMDS machine and directories will be created!

While those files are downloading, lets get to installing Apache. You ask, OK but why Apache? Well, we setup UMDS to go out and get the patch files, and now we need a location to export and publish a shared repository for the hosts to get the files from.

Apache allows us to easily create and publish a local repository, where vCenter can access those updates and patches locally, rather than going out to the VMware repositories out on the internet.

Let’s get Apache installed by running an update first, to make sure I’m getting the most recent version: sudo apt-get update

Then run then: sudo apt-get install apache2

When complete, I then can verify Apache is running by typing servicectl status apache2

Then open a browser and go to the server URL (or IP) and I could see the default Apache web page:

Now I need to set a location for UMDS to export downloaded patches into, which will be a folder on the server Apache will present.

First, I’ll create a new directory in the public HTML folder where I’m going to export the UMDS files…I’ll call it “umds”

sudo mkdir umds

Now with that directory created, I’m going to run the following to set the configuration: /usr/local/vmware-udms/bin/vmware-umds -S -o /var/www/html/umds

And checking the configuration I can verify the export store is now correct:

Checking the webserver first, we can see no folder or files in the umds directory:

Ok, let’s run the export command, we should see folders and files move to the html/umds directory when the process completes…sudo /usr/local/vmware-udms/bin/vmware-umds -E

UMDS then exported all the downloaded patches to the new webserver directory…this took some time, but when it was complete, I then saw files populated:

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Now it’s time to configure vSphere LCM to point to the UMDS web repository source.

Login to vSphere, we’ll go to the main menu, select Lifecycle Manager -> Settings (tab) -> Patch Setup and I’ll click on CHANGE DOWNLOAD SOURCE button.

Alrighty, up to here we have everything configured, and it’s now time to set up vSphere LCM to use the UMDS server as a local download source and repository.

In the pop-up window, I selected “Download patches from a UMDS shared repository” and entered in the URL to the UMDS server, like this:

**Note that I needed to use the FQDN of my UMDS server for the URL to resolve via DNS.***

Otherwise you’ll see an error complaining about the download source is invalid or cannot be reached now, like below:

Verify:

Sync updates, click on the Actions menu and click Sync Updates:

vSphere then began to sync updates…

And after a while…it fininshed

Now from here I can use the UMDS repository for updates. Nice!

However, I’m not done yet, because the UMDS download and export process is manual…so to automate that I will write a short script and create a Cron job.

Catch that in the NEXT BLOG 🙂