ESXi Archives

ESXi Manual Update

January 12, 2021

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

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Backups are a good thing to have. While it can be super quick and easy to rebuild your ESXi config sometimes that is not always the case. It’s a good idea to have a backup just in case. Here’s how to do it.

Enable SSH by right clicking on the host and selecting Services > Enable Secure Shell

Enter the following commands

vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/sync_config
vim-cmd hostsvc/firmware/backup_config

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Convert a system with VMware Converter

November 28, 2020

There are a few ways to convert a system either P2V (Physical to Virtual) or V2V (Hyper V to VMware). This will show you how to convert a system using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Client.

Before you start you should check a few things to make the whole process streamlined.

Check that the system is fully up to date (you might get stuck in an update trap if you don’t)
Check that you have remote access to the system (so that if needed you can at least get back into the system easily)
Make a note of the IP configurations (you will likely need to re add them)
If the system a domain member make sure that you know the local admin username and password (this is so that if it fails to talk to the domain you at least have a way back into the system)