Existing ESXI not found, upgrade 5.5 to 6.5

[Sigma84]

Hi

Hope someone can help me getting a way forward.

My system: 2 Host with hypervisor ESXI 5.5 and one 1 Vcenter 5.5

My goal is to add a new host ESXI 7.0

So far:

Vcenter is upgraded to 6.5 and one host is upgraded to 6.5. But my other host will not show the menu alternative upgrade, just the install

(The host is still working fine)

Most likely because I don´t se any ESXI on my disks

The host is a Hpe Proliant DL380 gen8

I have tried using Vcenters update manager and I have tried using a USB directly to the host. I have also tried using standard iso and HPE custom iso and I have tried a bunch of different images (U3,U2, and so on)

I have tried to do a offline bundle uppdate, using putty and the command "esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/<DATASTORE-UUID>/update-from-esxi6.5-xxx.zip"

And here is the result, In short terms unsuccessful

If a do a install instead of a upgrade

What will happen to Vcenter and all of my VMwares? I have 60 machines in that host and every machine have a note, I think that Vcenter holds that information and it would be sad if I lost that information

Or do you have any good idés on how to make the upgrade cli find my ESXI

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Assuming that you do not have 3rd-party addons installed on the ESXi host, you should be able to upgrade the host from the command line.

1. Upload the HPE Pre-Gen9 Offline bundle to a folder on a datastore, and put the host into Maintenance Mode
2. Find out the Profile Name from that bundle
   esxcli software sources profile list -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/Patches/hpe-offline-bundle.zip
3. Run the upgrade
   esxcli software profile install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/Patches/hpe-offline-bundle.zip -p <profile-name from previous commend> --ok-to-remove --dry-run
4. If  the command returns s.th. like "Installed successfully, but need reboot", reboot the host
   reboot

Note: With "--dry-run" you will see what the command is going to do without actually doing anything. To run the upgrade, run the command again without  "--dry-run".

André

[Sigma84]

That worked

Thanks a lot

[postech1]

Thank you! this was incredibly helpful advice.