Activate remote ESXI 6.5 server

[socorronet]

Hello, I am trying to set up a test environment for an office on the other side of the country. I discovered a previous IT person set up an ESXI 6.5 server but never activated or used it. I have the credentials and can get in, but creating a VM to perform this recovery is not possible without applying an active license first. I have tried going to this URL to get an eval key for 6.5 but I am redirected to 7 and the key does not work on this server:

https://customerconnect.vmware.com/en/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6

Because I am not physically there and there is no one at that location to assist me, is it possible to upgrade the server to 7 remotely, or can I still get a license key for 6.5 currently?

[scott28tt]

You can't get eval keys for version which are no longer supported, ruling out all 6.x versions.

[socorronet]

Is it possible to upgrade the host to 7 in order to use the license I do have? Using bootable media would not be an option. I can see there is a possible way to do this via SSH using "excli software profile install", however I cannot seem to find the right depot and image.

[a_p_]

It's basically possible to upgrade ESXi from the command line.

However, the first thing you should do is to check whether ESXi 7.0 supports your hardware.
Please see https://www.vmware.com/go/hcl

André

[socorronet]

Thank you for the reply. It does appear to be compatible with v7.

Dell R510

x4 Xeon E5503

8GB RAM

[a_p_]

>>> It does appear to be compatible with v7.
Where did you see this. All that I could find (on the Dell support page) is that the latest supported ESXi version for the R510 is v5.5.
In addition to this, with just 8GB RAM you can't do much, i.e. run many VMs on the host.

André