Every quarter we generate a suite of updates (including patches and security scripts) that are manually run on our ESXi 5.0 hosts. I don't have internet connectivity so I have to do it this way. I would like to be able to identify the latest quarterly update that has been run on the servers from vCenter and/or VI Client.
Right now, I'm thinking of appending the quarter, e.g. 1Q13 onto the DCUI message, then using PowerCLI at the vCenter to retrieve the DCUI message, parse it and paste the quarter into the Host Annotations field on vCenter.
Kind of ugly, but I can't figure out a cool way to get data like this out of the host. I don't want to rely on my user manually updating anything, e.g. the Annotations field on vCenter, it's too error prone.
I would really like something that can also be seen on the VI Client, too, as annotations are only on vCenter.
I would appreciate any ideas on the best approach to tackle this.
Thanks,