Are VMware ESXi 5 patches cumulative?

ESXi patches are cumulative. I just went from Build Number: 623860 to Build Number: 721882 skipping several patches. No problems.

VMware Employee Kyle Gleed says "Patches are cumulative. We typically release patch bundles every 3 months. A new patch bulletin will include all the updates/fixes from any earlier bulletins."

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/02/understanding-esxi-patches-finding-patches.html

There is a new blog post from VMware

The relevant summary is:

In short, the answer is yes, the ESXi patch bundles are cumulative. However, when applying patches from the command line using the ESXCLI command you do need to be careful to avoid getting into a situation where you could miss some updates.

The key is when applying patches from the command line you need to make sure you apply patches using the “esxcli software profile update …” command and not the “esxcli software vib update …” command.

...

Patches are essentially updates to VIBs and are distributed as ZIP archives. These archives can be loaded into Update Manager, or they can be copied to the host and used with the ESXCLI command. It’s important to note that along with the updated VIBs the patch archives also includes the latest version of all the other VIBs in the image profile. When you download a patch you aren’t just downloading the updates. You’re getting the complete ESXi software image.

So, yes. They are cumulative as long as you install them properly.

The patches appear to be cumulative, assuming you start with the most recent installable (.ISO-based) package as a foundation.

So my most recent example was pulling the ESXi 5.1 .ISO (build #799733) down and installing it onto my physical servers. From there, I had an option of build #838463 or #914609. Close analysis of the changelogs and knowledgebase entries showed that the #914609 build included everything from #838463. So I was able to go directly to that revision level, starting from the base install (#799733).