VCA for ESX 4.0

[Umesh Bhatta]

can any one tell me is VCA is available for ESX 4.0 host?

[David Claypool]

No, for several reasons...

1. The ESX Service Console doesn't allow for online firmware updates

2. Drivers that are normally supplied in the ProLiant Support Pack are instead supplied through VMware

3. The Management Agent package cannot be upgraded; you must uninstall it first.

[Rob Buxton]

What would be nice for the ESX and possibly ESXi would be a summary page of Firmware versions.
If these could be related back to a baseline it would match some of the reporting available from the VCA.
At the moment for our ESX Servers we just run the latest Smart Start against the server. That takes time, but so does manually rounding up and checking all of the SW/FW versions.

[Alexander A]

This can be done, use the reporting feature in HPSIM, it can give you everything I can think of. Here's the "inventory" section of an ESX 3, ESX 4 should also work as far as I know? "04/07/2007" is the BIOS. "Software and Firmware Baseline Infomration" will give you some firmware and driver info and "installed controllers" will give you the firmware for Smart Array controllers and the ILO card.

192.168.x.x 192.168.x.x Normal Server Virtual Machine Host 408838-421 ProLiant DL385 G2 CZCxxxxxxx 12582912 04/07/2007, Family 386A9, Type 03 Linux - VMware ESX Server VMware room1 (edit snmpd.conf) root@localhost (edit snmpd.conf) 2