A virtual appliance update mechanism detects when an update to a corresponding workload is made, and makes automatic corresponding changes to the virtual appliance to reflect the update to the workload. In one specific implementation, the virtual appliance update mechanism determines that configuration units corresponding to the update to the workload are present in a knowledge base of configuration units, and automatically updates the virtual appliance with the configuration units corresponding to the update. In this manner a virtual appliance may be automatically updated based on an update to a workload, thereby assuring the virtual appliance reflects the current state of the workload.