What does vSphere Update Manager (VUM) allow administrators to do?

vSphere Update Manager (VUM) plays a critical role in maintaining the health and performance of ESXi hosts within a VMware vSphere environment by enabling administrators to apply updates and patches efficiently. This functionality is essential for ensuring that the virtualization infrastructure is secure, up to date, and compliant with the latest features and bug fixes released by VMware.

By automating the update and patch management process, VUM reduces the time and effort needed to manually update each host. It allows for centralized management of updates, enabling administrators to deploy patches to multiple ESXi hosts simultaneously or on a predefined schedule. This capability helps maintain system stability and improves overall security by minimizing vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malicious actors.

While monitoring network traffic, managing user permissions, and backing up virtual machines are important administrative tasks, they fall under different functionalities and tools within the VMware ecosystem. VUM specifically focuses on handling updates and patches, making it integral to the operational and security management of ESXi hosts.