I'm using ESXi 5.5 and vCenter 6.5 with vSphere Update Manager. I successfully staged about 20 updates (new host deploy) and set it to remediate. I know this can take a long time, but the percentages are static for many hours. Is there a way to check (via command line or otherwise) if it's actually hung or if it's doing anything?
It would be nice to also get a more realistic idea about how much it's got to go, but that isn't essential, I mainly want to be sure that I can leave it be, and it's working properly on the patches, even if slowly.
On Windows I can watch update-related files being accessed and update-related processes I/O counts, in task manager/perfmon, as they do their disk and process I/O, and on Linux or BSD I can use various well-known tools (but they aren't included in ESXi). What's the equivalent with command line or other tools, in vSphere?
I didn't get an answer here so I asked on VMware communities. The best answer I got was that there's a VMware "fling" called visualesxtop (on the VMware flings website, best found via Google in case URL changes), which produces graphical and tabular monitoring data for an esxi host. Works great!
Normally it can take about 15-20 minutes on my hosts for remediation to finish. If it takes longer I know something's not right. Also my hosts have IPMI, which allow me to view and control them remotely so I can see if there are any errors booting up or while patching it. Your servers should have something similar for remote monitoring.