I have a HPE ProLiant DL160 Gen9 server running as a standalone ESXi 6.5U1 (5969303) host. The build number is important, to determine your build number see Build numbers and versions of VMware ESXi/ESX (2143832). It isn’t possible to upgrade ESXi 6.5U2 (8294914) to ESXi 6.7GA (8169922) because ESXi 6.5U2 (May 2018) was released after ESXi 6.7GA (April 2018). See Important information before upgrading to vSphere 6.7 (53704) If you are currently running ESXi 6.5U2, you will need to wait until ESXi 6.7U1 is released.
Since I don’t have vCenter managing this host I am unable to upgrade using VMware Update Manager (VUM), which would be my preferred method. An alternative to VUM would be to upgrade the host by mounting the ESXi ISO image, rebooting the host, and running the upgrade from the console. Unfortunately I am away from my lab and I do not have a license on this server for to use the Integrated Lights Out (iLO) remote console.
I do however have SSH access to this host which would allow me to use ESXCLI from the command-line to upgrade this host. The process was very simple:
- Download the HPE Custom Image for VMware ESXi 6.7 Offline Bundle
- Upload the Offline Bundle to your local datastore. Note: Do not unzip the file.
- Place the host in maintenance mode esxcli system maintenanceMode set –enable true
- Run the command esxcli software vib update -d (see sample below)
Reminder: After the host has been rebooted remove it from maintenance mode esxcli system maintenanceMode set –enable false