In spite of how capable and powerful ESXi is – and all for free! – I’ve had to refer to VMware documentation very little. These notes cover those few cases where the solution to my problem was not obvious, not well-described in the documentation, or difficult to remember.
Table of contents:
Quick steps to patch to the latest version:
[root@lixiviant:~] esxcli software sources profile list \ -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/_patches/ESXi600-201602001.zip Name Vendor Acceptance Level ------------------------------- ------------ ---------------- ESXi-6.0.0-20160204001-standard VMware, Inc. PartnerSupported ESXi-6.0.0-20160204001-no-tools VMware, Inc. PartnerSupported
[root@lixiviant:~] esxcli software profile update \ -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/_patches/ESXi600-201602001.zip \ -p ESXi-6.0.0-20160204001-standard Update Result Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective. Reboot Required: true VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.0.0-1.29.3568940 VIBs Removed: VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.0.0-1.26.3380124 VIBs Skipped: [...]
If you allow your host access to the Internet, you could have esxcli fetch it automagically:
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software profile update \ -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml \ -p ESXi-6.0.0-20160204001-standard
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient