We are currently on version 5.1 of vCenter, Update Manager and ESXi. Security patches have not been applied in the past and we have a mandate now to install all security patches for all operating systems in our datacenter. We have two vCenter servers in our environment which both use local storage. Local storage is limited on these servers (roughly 80GB remaining disk space on each vCenter server). VMware Update Manager is installed on our vCenter servers
Would setting up an Update Manager Shared Repository server allow us to store downloaded updates / security patches on that server as a centralized repository thus allowing us to be able to retain the disk space available on our vCenter servers? Also, could two vCenter servers be pointed to the same Update Manager Shared Repository server?
One more question, when applying a baseline using a shared repository server, are the updates installed directly from the shared repository server or are they copied to the vCenter / Update Manager server first, and if copied is this an automated process?
I've been researching but have been having trouble finding any real detail on how this will work.