Well I am happy to announce that Something has changed – again! Have you tried to find the VMware vSphere Host Update Utility? It was never downloadable – it was part of the vSphere Client which was bundled with your ESXi Installation.(by the way that has also been removed from the installation and is not a separate download as well.
What once was
Is now..
The reason that the download is actually almost 160MB larger with less inside is a mystery to me (I guess the multiple languages now built in – make it a lot larger). But there is no Host Update utility any more.
The general consensus is that that VMware are pushing for Central Management – which means you need to use Update Manager – which is only part of the vCenter Package.
If you still want to update your hosts you will have to revert to a bit of command-line work.
The solution to this in the Upgrade Guide.
What you will need is:
- A Scratch Partition on your ESXi host You must configure a scratch partition and reboot the host before proceeding with the upgrade.
You can configure a scratch partition for a host under the Software Advanced Settings in the Configuration tab of the vSphere Client.What is the Scratch Partition?
During the autoconfiguration phase in the Host installation process, a 4GB VFAT scratch partition is created if the partition is not present on another disk. When ESXi boots, the system tries to find a suitable partition on a local disk to create a scratch partition. The scratch partition is not required. It is used to store vm-support output, which you need when you create a support bundle. If the scratch partition is not present, vm-support output is stored in a ramdisk. This might be problematic in low-memory situations, but is not critical.
For ESXi Installable, the partition is created during installation and is thus selected. VMware recommends that you leave it unchanged.
- vSphere CLI – Download HereDownload the tool – For Windows or Linux and install on your workstation.
- Download the Upgrade Package for 4.0 to 4.1 or the Upgrade Package from 3.5 to 4.1
- Power off your VM’s and put the host into maintenance mode
- From the vSphere CLI prompt
vihostupdate --server host name or IP address -i -b location of the ESXi upgrade ZIP bundle -B ESXi410-GA
ESXi
So in my case For the ESXi Host
vihostupdate --server esxiServer1 -i -b c:\temp\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip -B ESXi410-GA
ESX
You can of course do the same thing with ESX Updates as well
vihostupdate --server host name or IP address -i -b location of the ESXi upgrade ZIP bundle -B ESXi410-GA-esxupdate
So in my case For the ESXi Host And for the ESX Host we have one more step in preparation of the updates.
vihostupdate --server esxiServer1 -i -b c:\temp\pre-upgrade-from-ESX4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip
and again We do the same for the ESX host
vihostupdate --server esxiServer1 -i -b c:\temp\upgrade-from-ESX4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip
A reboot is necessary thereafter.
Happy Upgrading!!
