Although most ESX patches are now done through VMware's Update Manager but occasionally we will need up manually patch an ESX host. Here is a quick way to do it with just the VI Client and putty.
- Be sure to put your host into Maintenance mode.
- After downloading your patch to your workstation, launch the VI client and pick an ESX host.
Right click on a datastore (local storage is great for this) and click 'Browse DataStore'.
- You can then click the upload icon
and then Upload File. 
- Navigate and choose your patch file package.
- Wait for the upload to complete. :)
- Launch Putty (or go to the server console) and log into your ESX host and switch to your DataStore directory.
- Move the package from the DataStore to the /tmp/ directory
mv <package> /tmp/
- cd /tmp/ and unzip <package>
- change into the created directory and run esxupdate update
- Once complete, reboot and exit Maintenance mode.
