The purpose of this blog post is to provide the guidance and the steps needed to upgrade your ESXi host from version 7 to version 8 via Putty. If you don’t have Putty installed on your local workstation, please click here to do so.
In order to successfully establish a Putty session into your ESXi host, you’ll need to Enable Secure Shell (SSH) first. This can be accomplished by right-clicking the Host, then select Services, followed by Enable Secure Shell (SSH).
Launch Putty and then enter the IP address for the host in the Host Name (or IP address) field, then select Open.
Next, you’ll enter the following command:
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient and then hit the Enter key on your keyboard.
Next, you’ll enter the following command:
esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-8.0.0-20513097-standard and then hit the Enter key on your keyboard. For my host, this process took roughly 8-10 minutes to complete successfully and you should receive the following as confirmation:
the command line upgrade will display “The update completed successfully.” You will see the note of the “Reboot Required: true” displayed.
In the event you receive a “no hardware warning”, you’ll need to append the following to the last command (full command listed below):
esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-8.0.0-20513097-standard –no-hardware-warning (this was previously mentioned in this post)
Type Reboot (not pictured) and your ESXi Host will restart and the upgrade process is complete. Also, SSH will be disabled after the reboot.
This concludes this blog post. If I have missed anything or if you have any suggestions, please let me know.
Al Rasheed - A personal Blog about IT related subjects. 