vcenter 6.7u3 download. how to?

[akanit]

Hi

i cant download vcenter 6.7u3n. it forces me to download 7. I have a hp gen 8 dl380p. with iodrive 2. and esxi 6.7 hypervisor installed. Is vcenter 7 compatible with this setup. If not how to download vcenter 6.7u3n?

thank you, 2 days doing this with blocked ips from vmware also so a real pain to get learning.

[akanit]

Hi

i cant download vcenter 6.7u3n. it forces me to download 7. I have a hp gen 8 dl380p. with iodrive 2. and esxi 6.7 hypervisor installed. Is vcenter 7 compatible with this setup. If not how to download vcenter 6.7u3n?

thank you, 2 days doing this with blocked ips from vmware also so a real pain to get learning.

[a_p_]

I assume that you are trying to downlaod an evaluation license, i.e. you don't have a paid license!? As a paying customer you have access to all prior versions.

Anyway, vCenter Server 7.0 supports ESXi 6.5 and later, so that you can go with the latest version.

André

Moderator note: Moved to vSphere Upgrade & Install Discussions

[akanit]

Hi thank you

will it be possible to install iodrive II drivers in vcenter 7?

[a_p_]

>>> will it be possible to install iodrive II drivers in vcenter 7?
What for? vCenter is a deployed as virtual Appliance that doesn's require any hardware related drivers.

André

[IRIX201110141]

The iodrive driver is needed within ESXi rather than vCenter an its VCSA. As long as you dont upgrade your Hosts all is fine with your iodrive.

As Andre already told you is that vCenter can manage up to 2 generation behind ESXi Hosts. So check if your environment like Backup, Monitoring and 3rd. Party stuff is vSphere 7 ready and you can upgrade your 6.x vCenter to 7.x.

Regards,
Joerg

[akanit]

Hi Thank you,

Main reason installing vcenter is to get HP IODrive 2 working. It shows in esxi as sandisk IO drive in HOST > Hardware. But there is no drives listed anywhere else i check hp Intelligent provisioning too.

I though it was strange that i need vcenter to install a driver.

Ps Student please forgive my stupidity i am putting in the hours at least

[IRIX201110141]

Yes.... there is VUM or new LCM in vCenter which can help when you would like to install Driver vibs but only when you vCenter is not located on the Host you would like to patch.

But as always.. .put a host into MM and from the console

esxcli software vib install -d  /path/to/<driver.zip> or  -n /path/to/<driver.vib>.

I assume that you need a driver from the Vendor to get the IoDrive working and that its not part of the vannilla VMware ISO.

The HCL shows a couple if HP Iodrives and support for ESXi 6.7u3.

Regards,
Joerg

[akanit]

Wow thank you save me wasting more time.

I have 1 hp dl380p. and was installing vcenter on this machine. if i do this i wont be able to update drivers. Yes the card is HP IODrive 2 1.2tb on esxi 6.7u3 hp image also.

So i should looking MM mode and install via CLI?

as for running vcenter on the host. par not being able to update the drivers on the host are there any other issues? or should i install vcenter on my laptop?

Thank you so much again.

[IRIX201110141 · Accepted solution]

Check https://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/detail.php?deviceCategory=io&productid=41084&releasei... and verify also that your Firmware for the IOdrive is the right one.

1. Download the driver
2. upload the driver into /tmp or exising datastore. pscp scsi-iomemory-vsl-60L-3.2.14.1675-3794031.zip root@youresx:/tmp
3. Shutdown all VMs and open an (ssh) console
4. vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter
5. esxcli software vib install -d /tmp/scsi-iomemory-vsl-60L-3.2.14.1675-3794031.zip
6. Read the output
7. vim-cmd hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit  and reboot
8. If the Host rebootet try to create a VMFS Datastore. Otherwise post a  "esxcfg-scsi -a"  and "esxcli software vib list"

The HCL says clearly its a Partner/Async which means it doesn comes with the vanilla VMware installer and its a old vmklinux type driver which mean 100% incompatible with ESXi 7.

vCenter adds a lot of benefit and the VUM/LCM is only one. So having vCenter on a single host with local storage only is not so uncommon but yeah you cant use the featur of updating/patching this host with the help of vCenter. So if you have a license for vCenter you sould install it because of the other 100 features which it offers.

About the IOdrive. The original vendor was SANDISk an they development their own driver to access the flash card. Other switch to NVMe like stuff and using the VMware nvme default driver. We use Intel DC P38xx in this timeframe and can choose between VMware default driver or the Intel NVMe one.

Regards,
Joerg

[akanit]

Thank you again,

Just sat down to try to figure it out and was going to write a how to. I was not going in the right direction, you explained it perfect that all makes sense and well written. Managed to get a license for 7, your right with all the new features worth exploring and its great that we can use older version hypervisor.

"The HCL says clearly its a Partner/Async which means it doesn comes with the vanilla VMware installer and its a old vmklinux type driver which mean 100% incompatible with ESXi 7."

So as long as i keep esxi 6.7 as my hypervisor, i can install the driver as described and use vcenter 7. Just the hypervisor that loses compatibility?

Exiting tech, will be fun.