What is the best way to upgrade DELLEMC R7525 ESXi hosts from 7.0u1c to 7.0u3c

[hjertis]

Hi,

We have upgraded our vCenter to 7.0u3c without problem.

Now we want to update our six DellEMC R7525 ESXi host from 7.0u1c to 7.0u3c in the VMware cluster.

I have upgraded one ESXi host from 7.0u1c to 7.0u3c by importing DellEMC 7.0u3c customized ISO file to the vCenter, created a new baseline in Lifecycle Manager and remediate to the ESXi host. After the updgrade the ESXi host is very unstable and the CPU utilization is 100%...

What is the best way to upgrade the DELLEMC R7525 ESXi hosts from 7.0u1c to 7.0u3c?

What about Convert to an Image in LifeCycle Manager and use DellEMC addon?

Thanks in advance for your respons!

/Audun

[a_p_]

Without knowing what may be causing the CPU load, it's hard to provide a solution.

Anyway, to find out whether it may be related to the installed vibs, you could e.g. run the following commands, and check which vibs show up under "VIBs Installed", and "VIBs Removed".

esxcli software sources profile list -d "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/<Dell-Offline-Bundle>.zip"
esxcli software profile install -d "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/<Dell-Offline-Bundle>.zip" -p <Profilename> --ok-to-remove --dry-run

André

[hjertis]

Hi Andrè

Thank you for your reply 🙂

The problem with the upgraded ESXi host is that the CPU utilization is very unstable. The ESXi host works fine for many hours with many VMs on. Suddenly the utililization increase to 100% og the VMs disconnect from the ESXi host for later on to be stable again.

Maybe I will reinstall the ESXi host by using the esxi 7.0u3c dellemc customized ISO to solve the problem.

I have six  more DellEmc  ESXi 7.0u1c hosts to upgrade to 7.0u3c.

What upgrade-metod do you recommend ? 

/Audun

[a_p_]

For small environments, where no additional drivers, and tool, other than the ones included in the vendor images are needed,  I usually use the command line method that I mentioned in my previous post.

The "profile install" option removes installed vibs, which are not included in the new image anymore.

André

[hjertis]

Thanks Andrè

I am not so familiar with using the esxcli.

The six Dellemc  Esxi hosts are installed by using the DellEMC 7.0 u1c customized ISO by using the baseline and Lifecycle Manager in vCenter 7.0

Is it not recommended to use the same metod to upgrade the Esxi hosts from 7.0u1c to 7.0u3c using the DellEmc 7.0u3c customized ISO by using vCenter 7.0u3c?

/Audun

[a_p_]

You can of course use the Update Manager or the LiveCycle Manager to path the U1 hosts to U3c. Currently known issues only affect updates from some U2, and U3 builds (see https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/86447).

A reason why I mentioned the esxcli method, is because of the issues you see. It may be worth trying to update/patch at least one of your hosts using this method to see whether it behaves like the current ESXi hosts with the CPU usage issue.
Using "profile install" (other than the "profile update") does some housekeeping, and removes vibs, which are not in the new image anymore. Patching the host using vLCM (desired state) basically does the same when specifying the VMware image plus the vendor Add-on.
Using Update Manager with the vendor image may let old vibs installed.

André  

[hjertis]

Thank you again for very useful info, Andrè!

I think I will try your ESXCLI-command on my ESXi 7.0u3c with the high CPU utilization first.

esxcli software profile install -d "/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/<Dell-Offline-Bundle>.zip" -p <Profilename> --ok-to-remove --dry-run

As I told you I am not so familiar with esxcli commands so what do I type in for the <Profilename> ?

Thanks in advance!

/Audun

[a_p_]

The first of the two commands I mentioned, will show you the profile name for the given offline bundle.

André

[a_p_]

... also note that the command line option "--dry-run" will only show what would happen, but doesn't do anything.

In order to run the update, please omit "--dry-run".
After verifying that the command's output shows "Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective." type reboot to restart the host.

Please remember to place the host into Maintenance Mode before running the update commands.

André