Upgrade host where vCenter is installed

[PatricNIX]

Hi,

I have 3 hosts managed by vCenter. I have vCenter installed on one of the hosts so I can't upgrade that one. I don't have vMotion as it is an Essentials license so I can't move it to another host temporarily. Is there a way to upgrade the vCenters host without manually copy the VM over to another host and start it up there and upgrade the host and then copy it back over manually!?

[weinstein5]

So I take you do not have shared storage? If you do and the vCenter VM is stored there your can just shut it down and the using the vSphere client connect to a host that has already been upgraded and the vCenter VM to its inventory?

If that is an option - There is no issue with shutting down vCenter and then upgrade the ESXi host with vCenter - the other two hosts will continue to run without issue -

[a_p_]

Which vCenter Server /ESX(i) version do you use? You can upgrade the host using the command line and/or interactively using a CD ROM (with ESXi 5.x only). Just ensure the vCenter Server version supports the new host version, so it will properly connect to the upgraded host once powered on again.

André

[PatricNIX]

No sorry I don't have shared storage, that's what makes it a bit hard. I'm running vSphere/vCenter 5.1. I guess I should have deployed the vCenter server on a machine outside of the "cluster" but that's not possible for me because all the hosts I have are in the cluster.

I'm using the Update Manager to install some non-critical patches but I can't do it on the host where vCenter is hosted as it needs to be shut down to be able to install the patches..

Can I install those patches through the command line? If so, how?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Unless you have individual packages and/or drivers installed on the host you can simply download the latest patch from Download Patches, upload it to a folder on the hosts local datastore using the Datastore Browser and the - either from the vCLI or from the hosts console - install the patch. To do this power off all VMs and run e.g.

esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/<datatore>/<patchfolder>/ESXi510-201303001.zip

and the reboot the host.

If you want to check what the upgrade would do - prior to applying it - you may append the "--dry-run" argument to the above command line.

André

[PatricNIX]

Thank you very much, it was very helpfull!