Upgrade ESXi 6.5 to 7.0.3 Without losing VM's Data

[myasin0511]

Hi

I have a NUC server with ESXi 6.5, want to upgrade to 7.0.3 without losing my VM's data, I followed following article for using the Graphical user Interface (GUI) with the new ESXi burned in a USB. I used iso image (VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0U3d-19482537.x86_64)

https://techviewleo.com/upgrading-from-vmware-vsphere-esxi-6-5-to-7-0/

I was able to load from the USB, But I am not getting the following option as in the guide to select if its an upgrade or  a new installation.

I am getting the following option which if selected the disk will be overwritten

Am I missing something or use the wrong image?

Thanks

Myasin

[CallistoJag]

The second screenshot is for the installation of ESXi itself. This should be on a different disk to the VM datastore. As long as you have selected this other disk and not the shared datastore, then you are fine to proceed. 🙂

[LucianoPatrão]

If you click F1 in the partition you are selecting, it will show you if it is a partition with VMs or a partition with the ESXi installed.

As you can see in the above image, is a new install but it shows ESXi found and Datastore.

So you need to do the same and have ESXi found= Yes and Datastore=no. With this is safe to upgrade your ESXi host.

Hope this can help.

[HailegebriealA]

In my opinion, it's better to upgrade 6.5 to 6.7 first and then 6.7 upgrade to 7.0.3 is very seamless.

[myasin0511]

@CallistoJag In that second screen I selected the USB drive, I think this is not correct and I should have selected the first drive which is the local storage.

As selecting the USB means I want to install the ESXi on the USB and not the NUC, is my understanding correct?

[myasin0511]

@LucianoPatrão  How I can change these values

Thanks

[LucianoPatrão]

Hi,

Did not understand the question. Because this is information about your partition, you cannot changed it.

If the question is how to select your partition Datatore/USB, both(or more if you have) show on that section. If USB is not showing, then ESXi is not recognizing your USB or SD Card.

[CallistoJag]

The datastore you are using for your VMs, is this the local disk? If so, you should not have ESXi installed there, it can't be installed with a VM datastore. Either you have 2 local disks, you install ESXi on a dedicated USB drive on the host (or SD card if you have one) and or your VM storage is on an external NAS or SAN if you are posh.

[myasin0511]

Hi

I selected storage disk for the upgrade/installation, but now I am getting an error message

For whatever option I select, I get the same error (the error is same as the second snapshot), how I can fix these errors?

Thanks

[jc296]

I had the same issue when I tried to install a later version of esxi on an old Dell R730 server - its basically your HW is not supported or the drivers for your Disk Controllers need updating.  It looks like the installer can't see your datastores/disks.

[LucianoPatrão · Accepted solution]

Ok that is a different error.

To be able to upgrade, you need to remove those vibs that conflict with the new version.

For an easy upgrade, you should do the upgrade in the command line in ESXi.

I had these errors when trying to upgrade my old DL360 G7 and needed to create a customized ISO to add or remove the vibs drivers needed to upgrade. But that is a bit of advanced work.

So my recommendation is to upgrade that in the command line. There is a lot of blog post out there that will explain to you how to do it.

Upgrading Hosts That Have Third-Party Custom VIBs 

Then you will get some errors regarding the vibs errors. In that case, you need to get the name and remove it.

Since this is a lot of tasks to explain here in a blog post, there are a lot of blog posts out there that you can search that will help you to do this.

Here is an example of how to do it. VMware ESXi 6.7 Upgrade: Remove VIBs  

Another example not the same issue, but give you an idea how to do this.  Missing dependencies VIBs Error 

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1027206 

Hope this can help.

[myasin0511]

Thanks All

I was able to upgrade