You can upgrade your ESXi very easily with vCenter but if you don’t have that well then here is how you can do it manually.
- Download the depot file you need from here https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal
With VMware the depot files contain the VIBs and image profiles (basically everything you need). You can read more about it here.
- Upload the offline bundle into a datastore (make a note of the full filename)
- Take a backup of your ESXi config. (Here’s how)
- Depending on your setup either migrate the VMs or turn them off
- Put the host into maintenance mode by right clicking on the host and selecting Enter maintenance mode
- Click on Yes to confirm
- Enable SSH by right clicking on the host and selecting Services > Enable Secure Shell
- SSH into the host
- you will now need to run a command similar to this
esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/RAID10/update/VMware-ESXi-7.0U1c-17325551-depot.zip
Everything after volumes will depend on your setup. I placed my file in a Datastore named RAID10 in a folder called update and the update I’ll be installing is VMware-ESXi-7.0U1c-17325551-depot.zip
- Wait for it to do it’s thing
It will then show you the installation result and you will likely need to reboot
- just type reboot
- Wait for the host to come back after the reboot (I like to monitor the host with IPMI)
- Once the host is online you can exit maintenance mode by right click on the host and selecting Exit maintenance mode
That’s it you have now updated your ESXi.
