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:
esxcli software sources vib list -d http://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | grep UpdateNow, 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.xmlWe 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_VIBWe 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-6.5Then 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.xmlBut if you have a slow connection, it might time-out, so copy it to the local vmfs and then update from a local zip:
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.5.0-20170404001-standard -d /vmfs/volumes/your_datastore/ESXi650-201704001.zip
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.