How to safely patch your vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 (VCSA)

Great news, this article has already been written, it's good to go as-is!

• How to Update or Patch the vCenter 6 Appliance
  JUL 07 2015 by Simon Davies at Everything-Virtual

How do I know? Because I tested it, updating the patch (aka upgrade) from VCSA 6.0.0 to VCSA 6.0.0.5120, aka, 6.0.0.b, and recorded each and every step of the process in the short video below. The file I downloaded here was released by VMware on JUL 07 2015 as:
VC-6.0.0b-Appliance VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.0.0.5120-2800573-patch-FP.iso
and it's 1.2GB in size, so you may want to kick off that download first, then use that time to grab a snapshot and/or backup of that VCSA, just-in-case.

If you only have a single VCSA 6.0 (appliance) to patch, the whole process takes between 10-20 minutes, depending upon your download speeds. The actual patch application took under 5 minutes running on an SSD datastore. After mounting the ISO, it's a single command that kicks the largely automated patch process off, followed by a reboot, detailed in this video.

Remember the old days, with doing such upgrades via port 5480? Yea, you could avoid the command line entirely, seen at TinkerTry here. I'm a little surprised this upgrade is actually a little bit harder, and that one key command is something you're more likely to have to look up. Not always easy in the secure datacenters I've worked in. This process is an area VMware could improve upon VCSA 6.0, no? Drop a comment below!

By the way, why don't you upgrade your ESXi to 6.0.0.b as well? It's generally recommended to patch your VCSA before you patch your ESXi, I have just the right article for you below.

See also at TinkerTry

• How to update your ESXi 6.0 host the easy way
  JUL 13 2015 by Paul Braren