One is the main application service and the other is a supplemental service used for mounting the disks of powered off VMs so they can be patched.Figure 2: The Update Manager Windows services will appear after you install Update Manager.v Center Update Manager requirements and installation The requirements for v Center Update Manager are fairly simple: a dual core CPU with a minimum of 2.0 GHz, 2 GB of RAM if running on a standalone server, 4 GB if running on the v Center Server, 10/100 network connection (gigabit preferred) and a SQL or Oracle database.The database used by Update Manager (either SQL or Oracle) is different from the one used by v Center Server, and you can use any formats that are also supported by v Center Server.By using a baseline and then installing patches and updates on hosts and VMs that need them, v Center Update Manager is also able to automate patching for solution providers and functions.

Next, you will be prompted to either create a new database using SQL Server 2005 Express or an existing database.

Solution providers that use the existing v Center Server database can select the existing Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection, otherwise they will have to create a new ODBC connection to which ever database is in use.

Next, you will have to choose which port to use for Update Manager; normally, the defaults are fine and you don't want to change them.

When it comes to patching and updating ESX and ESXi hosts and VMs, solution providers have several options.

Remote and local command line utilities are used to update hosts and VMs, and standalone applications, such as the v Sphere Host Update Utility and v Center Update Manager, are also helpful.