I don’t have a vCenter (because it is a low power lab), but I still want to keep my lab up to date, so I found a way to to do through ssh. I leave ssh running at all times, and changed “UserVars.SuppressShellWarning” to “1” so it doesn’t bug me to disable it.
First step is to check to see if we have any updates available:
Well, Broadcom broke this – I guess they don’t care about IT professional trying to make sure their skills are sharp enough to support the paid for systems. Well, they didn’t (haven’t yet?) broke the offline patching. so that is still here:
Copy it to the local vmfs and then update from a local zip (make sure you use full path):
esxcli software sources vib list -d /vmfs/volumes/toweresx/patch/*-depot.zip | grep Update
esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/toweresx/patch/*-depot.zip
I have also seen another’s person’s article about doing it with a Broadcom support way – https://thenicholson.com/updating-esxi-using-esxcli-broadcom-tokens/ but I don’t like mixing professional creds/keys with my home lab. Maybe I’ll find a reason to try it out some day. I just went on my personal one and found the depot zip by clicking around randomly in places that might make sense and found it – man they messed up that site!
Leaving this stuff here in case VMware escapes Broadcom and goes back to being something people want instead of something people are looking to find a replacement for.
First step is to check to see if we have any updates available:
esxcli software sources vib list -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep Update
Now, if there are any updates available, we can install all with this:
esxcli software vib update -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
We may want to only update one package, use this:
esxcli software vib update -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -n NAME_OF_VIB
We also may need to upgrade to a new version of ESXi, find what is available with this:
esxcli software sources profile list -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep -i ESXi-6.5
Then to perform the upgrade from an the internet, use this:
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.5.0-20170404001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
Great info here Steve. If I may ask you a question. Running the listed updates available is quite lengthy. I’m running an HP Server HPE-ESXi-6.5.0-Update1-iso-650.U1.10.1.5.26 (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
Do I risk anything running the upgrade on an embedded system?
With IT there is always risk in any change, but to help mitigate that ESX keeps a copy of the last OS version, you can get back to it by interrupting the boot process.
see http://www.virtubytes.com/2017/11/16/downgrade-esxi-6-5/ for screen shots
With upgrading “embedded systems”, it should be safe, the packages usually have dependency checking built into them.
The only thing you might miss out on is driver updates, but those might be included too.