Best way to migrate from 6.0 to 6.5 and include Spectre & Meltdown patches

[sandsfootgroup]

Hello

I'm looking to migrate an ESXi 6.0 estate to 6.5.  Trying to plan the least downtime/impact so looking for a sanity check for the current plan:

1. Migrate vCenter 6.0 to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5

2. Upgrade BIOS firmware on hosts for meltdown/spectre

3. Upgrade ESXi 6.0 to 6.5

4. Upgrade vCenter to 6.5 U1g

5. Upgrade VMTools on VMs

I'm planing on using ESXi650-201803001 2018-03-20 7967591 as the image for the upgrade - is this OK to do?

Mant thanks

[a_p_]

Welcome to the Community,

the steps sound feasible. However, there's no need for step 4, if you migrate to vCSA 6.5 U1g in step 1.

André

PS: Almost missed this:

see "For each virtual machine, enable Hypervisor-Assisted Guest mitigation via the following steps" at https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52085