Well, I'm just about to write a document on how we would like to do our update policy. My initial thoughts:
- ESXi patches: Check monthly for security patches, evaluate them if they need to be applied immediately. Normal patches wait for next update unless the patch mentions a specific problem we have.
- ESXi Updates: Check monthly for new updates. (Update 1, 2, 3, etc). Plan to update hosts after release.
- vCenter Server: Currently we never update unless we really have an issue that is solved in an update.
- Major upgrades (5.0 -> 5.1 -> 5.5) After release wait for 5.5a of 5.5 upd1. Then plan to upgrade.
We have 4 vCenter environments. Two are rather small, just 4 hosts. They will receive any updates first. After a month the same updates will be applied on production (over 100 hosts).
Any comments / remarks welcome