I am blogging from the Technosium Global Conference and Expo in Santa Clara, California. While here, I will be providing you important VMware info from the show.
VMware Update Manager is now shipping with the ability to patch offline virtual machines. This is done by using a special patching network for suspended or offline systems. Any organization implementing any network access control or that would be concerned by a system at risk by presenting itself to the main network.
Offline patching uses the Shavlik patch management technology to interact with Update Manager and the virtual machine. The patching capabilities currently include Windows virtual machines for Microsoft, Adobe, and Mozilla updates and a scanning only capability for Linux systems.