Automate ESXi Embedded Host Client upgrades

[bgwallace]

Team,

Is there a simple, recommended solution folks typically use to automate upgrades of the client in ESXi 6.5?

Thanks,
Brad

[Sreejesh_D]

Hi Brad,

The following article has the script for automating installation of vibs. A minor tweak will help you to use it for upgrading the VIBs.

https://www.brianjgraf.com/2015/08/13/automate-install-embedded-host-client-esxi-fling-hosts-cluster...

comment this condition.

if (($ESXCLI.software.vib.list() | Select AcceptanceLevel,ID,InstallDate,Name,ReleaseDate,Status,Vendor,Version | Where {$_.Name -match "esx-ui"})) {Write-host "It appears ESX-UI is already installed on $_. Skipping..." -ForegroundColor Yellow} else {

[bgwallace]

Hi yezdi,

Thanks for your help!  This is a great start and I'll definitely take a look into it.  However, I'm primarily a macOS user so it would be great if I didn't have to rely on PowerCLI and Windows for this to work.

If you or anyone else knows of a solution out there which can be loaded directly onto the ESXi server and do what it needs to do from there in order to monitor for the latest release and automatically upgrade when one is found that would be invaluable.

Best regards,

Brad

[bgwallace]

bump

[bgwallace · Accepted solution]

I couldn't find anything online so I put together the solution below.  It's pretty basic and crude, but feel free to use it or tweak/enhance it if you like.  The solution will automatically update the ESXi Host Client to the latest version every morning at 4am and if a reboot is needed it will shutdown any powered on VMs and then reboot the host.  For the VMs to restart automatically after the reboot, I'm using the built-in Autostart feature of ESXi.

• FTP the attached hostStartup.sh and updateEsxiHostClient.sh script files to a datastore location on the ESXi host.  For this example, I'll be using /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/bin.  If you use a different location, you'll need to substitute the path inside the hostStartup.sh script.
• SSH to the ESXi host as root.
  • Run the following commands.  If you used a different script location in the very first step, you'll need to substitute the path.

cd /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/bin

chmod +x hostStartup.sh

chmod +x updateHostClient.sh

• Add the script text below to the end of /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh but before the "exit 0" statement.  If you used a different script location in the very first step, you'll need to substitute the path.

# Call hostStartup.sh

/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/bin/hostStartup.sh