ESXi 5.5 Update 1 HP servers fail to upgrade

[ALIdscott]

ESXi 5.5 update 1 fails using cd from the HP ESXi 5.5 U1 1623387.    Failure occurs at 24% after booting off the CD, picking the datastore to UPGRADE, agreeing and acknowledging the upgrade.  The bar goes to 24%, and then I get the following error, which I've found KB article documenting, although not exact directory:

[Errno 39]  Directory is not empty:  '/vmfs/volumes/XXXXXlotsOfNumbersXXX/state.2804514.

Found several KB's very similar, but the directory is not exactly like mine.  What's troubling is this has happened on 3 out of 4 HP servers I've run the upgade on.   The end result is I've had to choose "Install" rather than upgrade, which is a pain and takes much longer.

For each server that it has failed to run, I power off the server, follow steps as outlined in VMware KB: Upgrading a VMware ESXi host fails with the error: Cannot run upgrade script on host

Once I complete those steps, changing the directory as necessary to get to the one indicated in my error, I reboot off the CD, but when it comes to the part where the install program shows which partition will be upgraded, NOW it doesn't see the ESXi installed there.  Pressing F1 for details on it shows the partition, the right size, same identifiers, but now where it says ESXI :  NO.   So I choose to continue and the next screen where you choose to Upgrade - preserve VMFS, or Install - preserve VMFS, or Install - overwrite VMFS,  it only shows the two INSTALL options, there's NO option to upgrade.

So what is the purpose of getting past this error about Errno 39 if the only option after the first boot from this CD is re-install ?  I would much rather upgrade and keep all my networking and iscsi info intact.

And if you should happen to complete the upgrade, and your ESXi host connects to an HP 2000 storage array, you will have to disable "HardwareAcceleration"  before you will ever connect to your storage / datastores again.  On ALL hosts in the cluster.

[etorre46]

What version of ESXi are you upgrading from?

Have you referred to the supported upgrade paths to ESXi 5.5?  In the document linked below, there are some call-outs related to not being able to preserve VMFS if you've previously upgraded from 3.x to 4.x and then trying to upgrade to 5.5.  If the other 3 hosts were not part of the same upgrades over time and may have been fresh installs of 4.x, that might be why they worked.

The first two scenarios listed in the documentation are a little confusing, and a little contradicting if you have an incompatible partition layout, so be sure to check that. If that is your case, then be sure to move any VMs that you may have on those original VMFS volumes to another supported volume(s) before installing.

To save you some "fresh host configuration" if you end up having to do the full install, you can also use host profiles to help quickly configure the new host when it's added back in (if your licensing is EP).  If you haven't played with host profiles before, I suggest testing it though, because there are some gotchas regarding host compliance.

Supported Upgrades to ESXi 5.5.x

[ssbkang]

I faced this issue as well but not with HP server, it was a Dell server.

The version of ESXi server was 5.0 no Update and after applying Update 3 to it, I was able to upgrade it to 5.5.

Alternatively, it might be a bit of pain process but mount a virtual ISO to the server and install it fresh.

[ALIdscott]

I'll have to check the version that was running prior to the update.  Although now that my hosts have been re-installed I don't think I'll be able to find out what the old version was.

The ESXi servers that failed were 2 (both of the hosts in my cluster) at one site, and 1 of the 2 hosts in a cluster at another site. 75% failure rate .  It's very strange to me that after running the update from CD the first time, having it fail with the error shown above, and then running the update again, that the Update did not find ESXi in the partition where it did find it the first time through.  I am curious if the the installer could find a version of ESXi there, it should present Upgrade - preserve VMFS, then would it fail again attempting to upgrade.  For me, since it never tried the Upgrade again, it just performed a new install, I don't know if clearing the "directory not empty" error did any good at all.  Just spent 30 minutes rebooting the machine and fixing the error and rebooting to the cd again.

I will certainly pay more careful attention to the version I'm trying to upgrade next time.