In order to reach out to the network on most corporate networks you’ll find yourself needing to make use of the corporate proxy server. You’ll need to configure this if you want to use Update Manager on the VCSA or perhaps update the appliance itself.

Log into the appliance via https://appliance.domain.local:5480, click on Networking on the left hand menu and then Manage tab. At the bottom you’ll see that the Proxy server is configurable.

Now try checking for updates by clicking on Updates on the left hand menu and then Check Updates on the top right. If you get the the following error, the procedure further below may help

Despite having the correct proxy server set, I could not successfully Check Updates. To get a little more information on why this was failing I ssh’ed into the appliance and attempted to perform a ‘check’ manually.

Log into the appliance and try the following (the URL was obtained by clicking on Updates/Settings)

You’ll now get a little more information on why the attempt is failing. I suspected the proxy servers so ran proxy.get in the appliance shell (/bin/appliancesh). The result was as follows

This tells me that setting the proxy in the GUI only sets it for http. In order to set the proxy for https the follow needs to be run, again in appliancesh

Now retry the wget command (in bash) or perform another check for updates.