if has any impact or risk not reboot host after installed or updated ESXi driver

[tianhailong666]

Hello everybody?

I  have be asked by my customer recently.

Customers have many ESXi hosts  without SAN infra or HA,  those hosts just holds local storage VMs,   they want to upgrade their ESXi RAID drive use esxcli software vib install -v xxx.vib  via ssh.   command perform successfully but need to reboot to effect.  Customer don't want to reboot immediately since reboot needs shutdown all VMs which hold by this host due to local storage infra,  So they want to wait a appropriate maintenance window time to recur reboot it. but they want to consult me that if has any impact or risk not reboot host after installed or updated ESXi driver?  (Customers have  about 80 hosts need to update driver )  Does anybody know it about ?  if have office announcement or document proved that's impossbile or have a risk that will cause Crash or PSOD ESXi host if don't reboot server for a long time??   I real appriciate your kindly suggestion or reply, thanks for your help in advance!

[RAJ_RAJ]

Hi ,

First I really wonder customer having 80 Hosts and doesn't have shared storage .

As per vmware once you have installed or updated any driver using esxcli and it shows reboot required you have to perform.

Some case we cannot reboot the host in that case we have check first by installing driver since after installation may be the device won't work properly or it won't list the drives etc

so we have to perform reboot else server will work normally .May be  in future it may crate some issue so reboot servers on priority

I advise you may test this on server and update or install on other servers  .

[tianhailong666]

Hi RAJ,

Thanks for your reply.

Customer  has been experience a  serious storage issue that cause all VMs unavailable,  So they finally decide to give up share storage even though there will bring such a unconvenient things.

yes ,  reboot is required when we have installed or updated our driver.   but  you won't see newly add drvier info via "esxcli software vib list | grep xxxxx"  if you don't reboot server.

I  also think it will bring a unexpect issue if you don't reboot server accordingly.

but how I advise customer for that?

Customer wants to do that, but they don't want any risk.

[RAJ_RAJ · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

Update him both scenario With Reboot and Without Reboot , also risk on the case when there is no reboot .

You have to clearly update him , In case any issue came if there is no reboot , data may loose . There will be a risk keeping data on Local Data store .

Make sure before proceeding get confirmation .