After Upgrade from 5.1 to 5.5 ESXi won't come online

[fschaeffler]

After I did an upgrade via online-update in the CLI, everything looked fine. No errors were being displayed and I was advised to reboot the system. I did reboot the system, however the server is not coming online again. What is the best practice for handling a problem like this. Manual inspection, repair to 5.1?

[admin · Accepted solution]

When you say its not coming online,,? are you referring its not booting up or its not connecting to the network.?

Thanks,
Avinash

[f10]

Hi,

I would first check the network connectivity to see if vCenter can ping the ESXi host. Then check the /var/log/esxupdate.log hosts.log and vmkernel.log to check for issues.

Remember that you can always revert back to previous version using SHIFT + R at boot prompt.

-f10

[fschaeffler]

As far as I understand, the ESXi 5.1 had also drivers for offically unsupported drivers like e.g. NICs. However in 5.5 also unsupported drivers got removed. That resulted in the server being running and being offline. By the shift+r trick I then could downgrade to 5.1. Thanks for your help!

[f10]

Good you may find additional info about drivers in VMware HCL or server vendors download site.