Update Manager

Here is an extremely useful tip if you are attempting to update ESX hosts in a remote datacenter.
I found it nearly impossible to update the hosts in a well connected datacenter. I even tried one update at a time but still was getting failures.

This occurs around the default timeout for tasks of fifteen minutes in Virtual Center.

Increasing this timeout gives the patches time to apply and copy over the WAN. It does have to be changed in the vpxd.cfg of Virtual Center and vpxa.cfg of the ESX hosts.

<task>
<timeout>10800</timeout>
</task>
<vmomi>
<soapstubadapter>
<blockingtimeoutseconds>10800</blockingtimeoutseconds>
</soapstubadapter>
</vmomi>

Fix:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1004790

I found some references to editing the vci-integrity.xml recvTimeout and UpdateDownloadReries. However this is incorrect, these settings control the download of the updates from the internet, not the download of the updates to the ESX host.