How to Patch a Standalone ESXi Host
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- Опубліковано 28 лип 2024
- In this video, we show you how to patch a standalone ESXi host
Unless you are managing a VMware ESXi server through vCenter then the hypervisor will be a standalone server
And to update and patch a standalone server we need to run a command from the CLI to apply a patch we download from VMware
Useful links:
customerconnect.vmware.com/patch
docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSp...
esxi-patches.v-front.de/
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Steps taken
1) Download patch
Point your web browser to the following URL and login to your VMware account
customerconnect.vmware.com/patch
Now, from the "Select a Product" drop down menu select ESXi (Embedded and installable)
By default this will be set for the latest major version, which at the time of recording is 7.0, but you can change this in the drop down menu
Click the Search button and it will return all patches that are available for that version
If it's too recent, then it's usually not a good idea to install it because when developers fix code, there is always the risk they'll create a new bug
Choose the patch you'll use, then click on the Download Now button to download the zip file
NOTE: Web browsers like Brave will result in an error message. You have to disable the Shield to allow cookies, trackers, etc.
Basically, VMware will restrict download access if you disable analytics
2) Upload patch to ESXi
The next thing to do is to upload the patch to a datastore the hypervisor has access to
In this example, we'll use the local storage
Login to your ESXi server, click on Storage and then select the Datastore
Copy and paste the location details for this datastore as we'll need this later
Click Datastore browser, then click Upload
Select the depot file you downloaded and click Open
Once the upload is complete you can click the Close button
3) Shutdown VMs
Because we are carrying out maintenance, gracefully shutdown any VMs that are running on this server
4) Connect using SSH
To apply the patch we need to open a remote console to the server using SSH
Click on Host then from the Actions menu select Services | Enable Secure Shell (SSH)
Now connect to the server using SSH and login as root
5) Pre-stage patch
Next we'll run a command to pre-stage the patch, but we need to know the image profile name
In my case we're installing 7.0U3c and you can find this on the website but it also tells us this in the filename, VMware-ESXi-7.0U3c-19193900-depot.zip
As this is a standard edition of VMware we're running, we'll use ESXi-7.0U3c-19193900-standard for this patch release
Now, if we'd opted for 7.0U2d instead it would be ESXi-7.0U2d-18538813-standard
We also need the location of the patch, which hopefully you copied in a previous step
The command for me to then run is as follows
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-7.0U3c-19193900-standard -d /vmfs/volumes/60081218-95c16d94-3698-1418774a8f18/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3c-19193900-depot.zip --no-hardware-warning
The last parameter is optional and is to disable the hardware warning as I already know about a CPU support risk
6) Reboot and update server
At this stage the patch isn't applied and it requires a reboot
As a best practice you should now put the server into Maintenance mode first
Back in the ESXi GUI, click Host then click Actions and select Enter maintenance mode
This is to make sure the server comes up in a stable state and VMs aren't started as soon as it's ready
As long as no VMs are running, reboot the server by clicking the Reboot option
Once the server is back up, login into the GUI and click Host
You should now see the version has changed, due to the upgrade
You can now disable maintenance mode by clicking Actions and selecting Exit maintenance mode
The server is now updated and ready to use
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How to Patch a Standalone ESXi Host
00:00 Intro
00:32 Download patch from VMware
07:40 Upload patch to ESXi
09:22 Shutdown VMs
10:00 Enable SSH service
12:07 Pre-stage patch
16:42 Maintenance mode and reboot
18:55 Undo maintenance mode - Наука та технологія
Although you can use VMware's ESXi hypervisor for free, you are expected to pay for vCenter to manage multiple servers. But if you have just a standalone server, you can still update ESXi and it's free
Second time I've used this video to update my Standalone ESXi Host. Very detailed, thanks again!
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated
I don't want to think how many times I refer back to my own videos
It's part of the reason I created them
Thank you so much! This worked for me. Microsoft released a KB update that breaks VMs booting in UEFI secure mode, so I needed to update ESXi to version 7.03K. Your video was very thorough and easy to comprehend. My VMs are back online! Thanks again
Taking snapshots of VMs has got me out of several update problems over time
But good to know the video was helpful
David thanks for your hospitality to do and share this videos , i passed all the morning reading a lot of how i can apply the last patches releases to esxi.
Regards
Thanks for the feedback and glad the video helped
Thanks David. Great video and really appreciated the written instructions in the comments. Worked perfectly!
Glad it helped
Thank you! I've been struggling with this issue for a little over a week and your video showed me what I was doing wrong! Thank you!
Thanks very much for the feedback
And glad to hear this was useful
Appreciate your thorough explanation. I'm new to working on servers and was having the hardest time updating from 6.5 to 7.0. Big thanks!
Good to know the video was helpful
I've found ESXi is usually pretty simple to set up and maintain compared to most other hypervisors
But thanks to they're marketing model patching stand servers is more difficult
Thanks for this excellent walkthrough. Much appreciated!
Thanks for the feedback. And good to hear the video was helpful
Great walk thought, it worked! I was a little worried I'd have to learn how to exit maintenance mode from the DCUI as I virtualize my network router on the esxi machine, but was able to log right back into the webgui for esxi. Thanks!
Good to know the video helped
I never like upgrading a hypervisor as there are too many dependencies
Thankfully ESXi allows you to nest hypervisors so I can at least test patches out first
Good procedure, easy to follow. Helped me patch my ESXi 8 server!
Good to know things went to plan, so thanks for the feedback
Excellent video sir, new to ESXi side of things and was having issues getting a test VM up and running in my home lab.
Glad to hear the video was useful
Thanks, the exact video i needed! Very useful indeed.
Thanks for the feedback and good to hear the video was helpful
Hello David, another great video. Thanks. Have an awesome day sir!
Good to hear the video was useful
Incredily helpful thank you for the assistant!
Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated
And good to know the video was helpful
Thanks! Very helpful video :)
Good to know the video was useful
Thank you, this was helpful!
Thanks for the feedback
Good to know the video helped
Excellent Video. Thank you so much!
Good to know the video was helpful
Great tutorial. Thanks👍
Good to hear the video was helpful
Very helpfull cheers mate!
Good to know the video was helpful
Thank you kindly sir, this was very helpful and well explained as well.
Thanks for the feedback and good to know the video was helpful
@@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone I checked your channel and saw a few other interesting videos that I might check out in the near future, I dropped a sub in the mean time!
@@kodemasterx Thanks very much, hope you find the other videos useful
Thank you!
Good to know the video was useful
This video has been very helpful, a question David, are you using Linux or Mac? What distro?
I'm using Linux, Pop!_OS to be specific
Thx D. Informative video. 👍
Wouldn't it be safer to enter maintenance mode before installing the patch and then proceed with the update? Maintenance mode (e.g. in sql server) allows only one connection, which is the root user in our case. Some extra security IMO.
I'm not aware of similar behaviour with maintenance mode for ESXi
The security guidance I've seen is to isolate the management interface to limit where remote management access can come from but nothing about limiting the the number of login attempts or the number of connections
Makes a lot of sense then as to why SSH is automatically disabled after the server reboots
Maintenance mode itself is more for clusters I think because it would stop other hypervisors migrating VMs to the one being worked on and also immediately after it reboots
In this case we're pre-patching an update which takes effect after the reboot so it doesn't really matter as it's a standalone hypervisor
@@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone Makes sense too. thank you for your reply and keep making videos. It's nice to watch them. No unnecessary content, directly focused on the topic 👌
great video, got my vmware esxi updated withought any issues
Good to know the video was helpful
I wish they'd offer a better GUI for standalone servers, but their focus is Enterprise companies running clusters
Great video, plan to upgrade mine soon. Do you know whether this works with done with Custom ISO's from the VMware website (II installed using their Dell Custom ISO? Also do you know whether you can boot with the custom ISO and just upgrade it like that? Thanks to anyone for their input.
As far as I recall you can't download and patch with a standard ISO if your server is running a custom build
You need the upgrade for that vendor
quick one do i have to install patches in sequence or i can skip to the more recent ones if there is a gap?
nevermind just realized you addressed it. thanks
Thanks for this video very helpful. I have updated my physical host and 4 nested Esxi hosts - VMs. However, I have one hosts fails with the following error [InstallationError]
Failed to remove ramdisk stagebootbank:
Please refer to the log file for more details. Do you have an suggestions I have tried changing the swap location and changing the cache settings no success. Thank you
The common option I've seen is to move the swap file somewhere else:
Host > System > Swap
But since you seem to have done that, I'd suggest checking the logs for more specific details
You can get their locations here:
docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vsphere.monitoring.doc/GUID-832A2618-6B11-4A28-9672-93296DA931D0.html
You can also try this article about free space problems:
kb.vmware.com/s/article/1007638
Can you do the same thing from Help - Update in the client?
I'm only seeing an option for VIBs (vSphere Installation Bundle) in the Help menu
A complete update for vSphere would involve downloading a Software Depot which contains every package needed and requires either the VMware Update Manager or you use the CLI
In my case I have an HPe server in a production environment and it is an enterprise version can you please help me create the command line to use to run the updates. what would be different here, I have downloaded the customized HPe image and it is uploaded to the datastore
You'll need to follow along with the video to see how I created the command for my own server to work out how to do this for yours
But what follows the -p parameter depends on the file you've downloaded plus the software edition you're running
If it helps, on the host page you'll see a section on the right called Configuration and in there an Image profile for what you already have installed
Mine is currently showing ESXi-7.0U3c-19193900-standard
So I know any update I apply requires that trailing -standard
What follows the -d parameter depends on where the file was uploaded to and it will be different for each server
If you go back over the video you should see how I found that out for my local storage
If it helps, go to Storage and then click on the datastore you'll find that path for the file where it says Location in the top left corner
@@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone That is very helpful much appreciated!!
Finally, no hinglish
I think the search option is now messed up
It's really difficult to find what you want now
Hi David, can you patch a Dell custom image with the standard software patches released from VMware without it screwing things up? Say I'm running DEL-ESXi-703_20842708-A10 (Dell Inc.) and want to use VMware-ESXi-7.0U3p-23307199-depot? Would it be better to download the latest Dell custom image VMware-VMvisor-Installer-7.0.0.update03-22348816.x86_64-Dell_Customized-A19.zip and apply the updates through that?
If it's running an image made for Dell, then it's best to update it with a custom patch
Hi Dave, posted a comment yesterday but it seems to have disappeared? I shall try again! Really great video, really clear talking style and it helped me learn a bit more about the subject and I am looking forward to watching more of yours... I am stuck updating my home HPE esxi server 7.0 Update 1 as it does not have -standard in the profile and I'd love your input please? The profile name in the host screen is showing as "(Updated) HPE-Custom-AddOn_701.0.0.10.6.3-9 (Hewlett Packard Enterprise)" and the new downloaded customised file is "VMware-ESXi-7.0.3-20842708-HPE-703.0.0.11.2.0.9-Jan2023-depot". What on earth should I use for the profile? I've tried -standard and many other combinations but consistently receive "[NoMatchError] No image profile found with name XXX". Completely stumped by this -profile section!
I haven't seen the other comment but this one was in held for review as it contains "coding" details
The profile name and file name look very different and I'm not familiar with the HPE servers to suggest what should work so you'll probably have better luck asking on the VMware or HPE forums
While I was looking around though I did come across this
vibsdepot.hpe.com/getting_started.html
But I'm not sure if that helps
Otherwise there was a much more technical PDF for ESXi on HPE servers
www.hpe.com/psnow/doc/a00061651enw?jumpid=in_lit-psnow-red
@@TechTutorialsDavidMcKone thank you very much for your input! Much appreciated! Would you believe the detailed PDF (which I had read) lists an incorrect command, missing the -p profile info and also the -d which is a requirement!
But.. I've done it! I found a command which lists the profiles available within an image which is "esxcli software sources profile list -d /vmfs/volumes///". This gave me the profile name I needed for the update (which was: "HPE-Custom-AddOn_703.0.0.11.2.0-9 "). I Updated the update -p section of the command which went through perfectly and server has rebooted on 7.0 Update 3 quite happily :)