brain-dump/sysadmin/vmware/vmware-esxi-upgrade.md

Upgrading VMware ESXi without Update Manager

This is for VMware's basic images, not vendor-specific images like Dell EMCs.

According to this Dell rep you can use VMware's repositories for Dell servers.

My notes on custom image upgrades.

First, offload VMs to another host, a reboot will be required.

Enable SSH in ESXi:

• Host > Manage > Services > TSM-SSH > select > Start

Now login to the CLI via your terminal (Replace 192.168.1.2 for your ESXi address):

ssh root@192.168.1.2

Check what version is currently running:

vmware -vl

VMware ESXi 6.5.0 build-8294253

VMware ESXi 6.5.0 Update 2

Allow outgoing connections in the local firewall

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

Get a list of available profiles we can update to

esxcli software sources profile list --depot=https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml

No verbose output, will take a bit to grab the info from VMware's servers.

• Copy/paste the output into a spreadsheet so you can sort to get the latest you're willing to upgrade to.. the output is mixed order. In LibreOffice: Data > Sort > tick Descending

Do a dry run to see what will happen (I chose ESXi-6.5.0-20181103001 from the profile output as what I'm going to update to.)

esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-6.5.0-20181103001-standard --dry-run

Go for the real update and hope for the best..

esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-6.5.0-20181103001-standard

Once again, no verbose output.. leave it and let it do it's thing.

Once it's done, you'll see the empty prompt return in your CLI:

[root@vmware:~]

Lock it back down and disallow outbound requests, once again

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient

Reboot for changes to take effect

reboot

Step away for a few moments and give it time to boot up.

Once it's back up, log back into ESXi's SSH to ensure the build has updated:

[root@vmware:~] vmware -vl

VMware ESXi 6.5.0 build-10719125

VMware ESXi 6.5.0 Update 2

or

uname -a

VMkernel vmware 6.5.0 #1 SMP Release build-10719125 Nov 4 2018 15:44:22 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 ESXi

Confirm on VMware's site the build is what you wanted.

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Unexpected issues sometimes happen:

[Errno 28] No space left on device

There's a high likelihood you're not out of space, eventhough you get this poorly-worded "error."

In the ESXI GUI:

Under Navigator > Host > Manage > (under the System tab) > Swap

• Make sure Swap is Enabled
• If Datastore is none, tick Edit Settings and select a datastore for a swap file to be created if the upgrade needs additional RAM
• Local swap enabled: Yes
• Host cache enabled: Yes
• Save settings

Re-submit your upgrade command.