The ultimate guide to upgrade your white box to ESXi 6.So finally VMware made v.Sphere 6 generally available GA I already wrote about what we can expect from ESXi 6.I bet that a lot of people cannot wait to have their boxes upgraded.In this post I will explain how you can download ESXi 6.Login to My VMware to download products, manage product license keys, get support and file support request.Welcome to vmhelp.Unofficial VMware ESX Server Whitebox HCL.If you have any questions or comments, you can leave a comment on one of the pages or.I have got the ESXi 6.ESXi 5. 1 up and running and it even picks up an IP from DHCP, however I am not able to connect to it with putty, no ping to.AM.jpg' alt='Install A Patch On Esxi 6' title='Install A Patch On Esxi 6' />VMware ESXi is the industryleading, purposebuilt baremetal hypervisor.ESXi installs directly onto your physical server enabling it to be partitioned into multiple.ESXi 6. 0 installation ISO for new installs.How to get the bits.I you have a paid v. Anti Terrorism Force Protection Powerpoint Army Theme . Sphere license under subscription then you can download ESXi 6.Sphere 6 components that you are entitled to from the My VMware Downloads page.Even if you will use ESXi only with a free license key you will need a My VMware account for the following steps.If you are already running ESXi then you most probably already have one if not then register now.Its easy and free.The free license offering has already been updated to 6.Sphere Hypervisor page to register and download ESXi.There you will also find the license key that you need to enable the features of the free version after installation.The ESXi installation image can be downloaded in two different formats On the one hand there is the ISO file named VMware VMvisor Installer 6.CD media and use to boot your machine and install or upgrade ESXi on it.On the other hand there is the Offline Bundle named VMware ESXi 6.ESXi directly from the command line using esxcli.You also need the Offline Bundle to customize the ESXi installation and build your own installation ISO e.Unfortunately the Offline Bundle is right now only available to you if you have a paid v.Sphere license under subscription registered with your My.VMware account On the download page of the free v.Sphere Hypervisor you will only find the ISO file, and even if you register for a v.Sphere evaluation you will not be able to download the Offline Bundle, but only the ISO file.Confused already Here is another option A different way to download ESXi is through the VMware Online Depot.The primary purpose of the VMware Online Depot is to serve as a synchronization source for VMware Update Manager VUM, the product that you use to patchupdate ESXi hosts that are managed centrally through v.Center. However, since it is all about patching the ESXi 6.GA bundle is usually not available in the Online Depot right away at the GA date, but is added there some time later at least this is how VMware handled it for the release of ESXi 5.My new service, the ESXi Patch Tracker, can notify you once the ESXi 6.GA bundle has been added to the VMware Online Depot, because it does nothing else than querying exactly that.I suggest that you subscribe to its RSS feeds andor follow its Twitter Bot ESXi.Patches to get the news just in timeOnce the ESXi GA Imageprofile is available in the VMware Online Depot you can upgrade your host directly from it provided that your host has a direct Internet connection.For an offline upgrade you can then also use my ESXi Customizer PS script to create both the ESXi 6.ISO and Offline Bundle.But right now this is not yet an option, and I will explain that in a later post to not further confuse you 2.Beware of driver blacklisting Identify your devices and drivers used.Standard disclaimer warning.The workaround described in the following sections and any software package that you install through the V Front Online Depot are neither endorsed nor supported by VMware Use at your own risk and never on production systems When VMware released ESXi 5.NICs from it that are commonly used in consumer grade hardware r.Realtek chips, sky.Marvell chips and less common s.Neterion 1. 0Gb cards.Luckily you could still keep them installed when upgrading from ESXi 5.ESXi 5. 5. With ESXi 6.VMware goes a step further and actively prevents installing these drivers by using a blacklisting method that is based on VIB package dependencies The ESXi system package misc drivers is flagged to replace the above mentioned driver packages which means that you cannot install misc drivers and any of these drivers misc drivers though is absolutely necessary for ESXi so you must install that As a workaround I created new packages that just includes the driver files of the net r.As a replacement for net r.So, are you using one of the blacklisted driversFind out by running the command.ESXi shell. This command will list all the NICs that are in use on your system together with the associated driver name in the third column.If this command lists r.ESXi 6. 0. Lower the systems acceptance level to allow Community supported packages.Community. Supported.Client. Install e.V Front Online Depot.After a reboot your host will work exactly as before.Check installed packages and take appropriate actions.Before doing the actual upgrade its a good idea to check if you have other officially unsupported ESXi packages installed on your host, and how they will behave with ESXi 6.Lets go through the packages that are available through the V Front Online Depot.As stated above it is safe to keep this driver with ESXi 6.This driver by GLRoman updates the ESXi builtin e.Intel Gigabit NICs.In ESXi 6. 0 VMware has also updated its own e.I could check that the VMware supplied version in ESXi 6.GLRomans driver. However, please do not uninstall GLRomans driver prior to the ESXi upgrade, because this could potentially render your host unable to boot because of no supported NIC found.Instead follow the clean up steps below section 5 after the upgrade This package allows to run nested ESXi hosts under Microsofts Hyper V.I have not tested that, but I expect that it is safe to keep that and that it will still work with ESXi 6.This package enables support for additional SATA AHCI controllers.It is still required with and compatible with ESXi 6.Keep it if you have that installed.This package updates CPU microcode files.It is incompatible with ESXi 6.ESXi 6. 0 comes with a VMware supplied package with the same name, and that will just replace the community supported package.Pro. FTPD I quickly tested this FTP server with ESXi 6.However, some users reported that they had issues with this package on ESXi 5.I no longer recommend using it.Uninstall it with esxcli software vib remove n Pro.FTPDno reboot requiredesxcli shell This is an esxcli plugin that allows you to run any ESXi shell command through esxcli.It still works with ESXi 6.However, I wonder for what purposes this can still be useful Please let me know if you use itfw ntpd Adds an ESXi firewall rule to allow incoming NTP traffic.The firewall subsystem has not changed in ESXi 6.The VMware Tools for nested ESXi hosts is a VMware fling that is very useful for virtual ESXi hosts in lab environments.Actually VMware also finds this so useful that it is now officially included in ESXi 6.Unfortunately an upgrade to ESXi 6.I recommend doing this manually before esxcli software vib remove n esx tools for esxirequires a rebootvmware esx dvfilter maclearn Another cool VMware fling that is very useful in nested environments.According to William Lam it is still needed in ESXi 6.ESXi 6. 0. At least it survives an upgrade, and it looks like it is safe to keep it.Raphal Schitz the author of these packages will test them on ESXi 6.I cannot make a recommendation for them right now, sorry If you are unsure then you can check whether you have any of these packages installed by running esxcli software vib list less.ESXi shell. This will create a list of all installed packages that you can scroll through using the cursor keys press Q to return to the command prompt.You can also search for a specific package with esxcli software vib list grep i lt package name 4a.Upgrade to ESXi 6.Offline Bundle. So, now we are finally ready to upgrade your white box to ESXi 6.If you managed to get your hands on the Offline Bundle then you can use the following procedure 1.Upload the ESXi 6.Offline Bundle VMware ESXi 6.Use the the legacy v.Sphere Client like this Host Configuration Storage Datastores Browse Datastore.Note the datastore name VMStore.In the datastore browser window select the root directory on the left, click on the Upload icon and select Upload File.A file selection dialog will pop up now Select the Offline Bundle from your local hard disk and it will be uploaded to the datastore then.Log in to an ESXi shell and run the upgrade like this esxcli software profile update d vmfsvolumesVMStore.VMware ESXi 6. 0.
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