With every new vmware esxi build you need to update your servers. It is very easy with Update Manager, but how to do it when there is standalone version of ESXi or one managed by vCenter server? It can be patched very easy way via CLI and using SSH. Today we will try such process with upgrade ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 in my home lab. In the future posts I will tell you about my home lab, but now lets start to upgrade standalone esxi server which is managed by vCenter living on this server. We need ESXi Offline Bundle (VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip file) for that.
The ESXi Offline bundle is available for paying customers now, and it’s not known when users of free version of ESXi will be able to download it. There are two ways of upgrading the existing ESXi hosts. The hosts can be running ESXi Free Version or not. The offline bundle works for both.
- Patch ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 by using VMware Offline Bundle
- Patch ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 by using VMware Free Hypervisor ISO file.
First of all you nees to shut down all your Vms cause in both scenarios there is a downtime. So:
- Download bundle.
2. Upload VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip to your datastore on ESXi host
3. Enter maintance mode, ssh (it must be enabled on your host) to your esxi and execute
esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore_name/VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip
4. Restart esxi host and check the build.
Patch ESXi 5.x to ESXi 6.0 by using ISO file
If you are not allowed to download bundle, you can download VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.0.0-2494585.x86_64.iso
Now upgrade your system esxi 5.5 to 6.0 following the on-screen instructions (just select upgrade instead of install 😀 )
Tada!
You can also revert back to ESXi 5.5 if anything goes wrong. After the BIOS sequence hit Shift + R (Recovery mode). Then just select previos version of esxi.
If you have any questions feel free to write comments.