There seems to be some debate on whether in-place upgrades of ESX server are a good idea, or whether it's better to abandon old versions and go for clean installs. My opinion is that if your server is healthy and you don't have any issues or problems, then there's no need to be scared about upgrading your existing installation.

First download it from vmware and untar it:

tar zxfv 3.0.1-32039-full.tgz
cd 32039
ls

You will the tarball contains a load of .rpm files. Updating from this directory should then be as easy as:

/usr/sbin/esxupdate -n update

However if you have already done some patching on your server you may receive the following error:

INFO: 1 packages need to be downgraded.
Please use the --force option and try again.

Do not use the --force option in this situation as doing so will downgrade your previously installed patches. Instead, check your update log and see which packages are flagging the errors.

grep -i downgrade /var/log/vmware/esxupdate.log

Then use the -x switch to exclude those patches from the esxupdate.

/usr/sbin/esxupdate -x VMware-esx-scripts.i386 -x krb5-libs.i386 -n update

The -n switch supresses an automatic reboot so you can review the output of the command, but you will need to restart your server when the update has finished.

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