Part of building a new system is to make sure the new one works, at least, as the old one.
When working on my new Update Manager I configured the download scheduler settings, notification, baselines, etc…
But one thing was not working fine…. There was any patches for ESX 3.5.
Despite the fact the download task just ends very quickly and with a successfully message, there was no patch for ESX 3.5 on my repository, but I do have patches for ESX 4.x.
Well, I started with the basics, checking firewall, internet access, NTFS privileges on the folders, database availability….everything was good.
So after hours of troubleshooting and searching the web I finally found vmware KB 1008308.
It means that if you don’t have an ESX 3.5 attached to your Virtual Center it would not download the patches for it. I assume it’s always true for ESX 4.x patches.
It should be an issue for the majority of fresh environments where no host will be attached until the system is made fully operational.
Then I just added one ESX 3.5 to my Virtual Center and run again the download task…this time the patches for ESX 3.5 were downloaded to my repository.
What just confuses me is that you have the option to select what patch we want to download.
But the true is regardless the option you choose on “Patch Download Settings” it will just download the patches for the systems you already have attached to your Virtual Center.
Weird, right…