vSphere 5.5 is publicly released and it is generally available to download for public. Ok, what would be the next step? Yes it is to evaluate the features of vSphere 5.5 by installing or Upgrading your ESXi 5.1 to ESXi 5.5. To help you on that, this post covers the step by step procedure to upgrade the ESXi 5.1 to ESXi 5.5 using command line.
You can upgrade to ESXi 5.5 hosts directly from ESXi 5.0 or ESXi 5.1 host and also in most cases you can migrate an ESX 4.x or upgrade ESXi 4.x host directly to ESXi 5.5.
The following ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.0 versions are supported for upgrade to ESXi version 5.5:
ESX/ESXi 4.0.x (including all released updates and patches)
ESX/ESXi 4.1.x (including all released updates and patches)
ESXi 5.0.x (including all released updates and patches)
ESXi 5.1.x (including all released updates and patches)
We have already covered an another post Upgrade ESXi 5.1 to ESXi 5.5 inplace upgrade by attaching ISO image and perform step by step screen operations but this post covers the method of upgrading ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 5.5 via command line.
Procedure to upgrade from ESXi 5.1 to ESXi 5.5 via Command Line
1. Make sure your hardware and configuration is compatible to run ESXi 5.5. Verify your current ESXi version.
2 Migrate the Virtual Machines on the host to other ESXi host in the cluster using vMotion
3. Remove the SAN connections made to the host temporarily to avoid storage corruptions
5.Make sure your ESXi host have connection to internet to download and installer the ESXi 5.5 installer . If you are doing it directly via internet. (This post will cover this method of upgrade).
6. Enable the Http client in ESXi firewall (outbound)using the below command
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
7. Refresh the Firewall using the below command for the changes to take effect.
esxcli network firewall refresh
8. Verify the Http client is enabled on the firewall using the below command
esxcli network firewall ruleset list
9. Execute the below command to download and install the Update from VMware update site
esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.5.0-1331820-standard
9. Upgrade process will take some time based on the speed of your internet and Once it is done You will get the below message
The Update Completed Successfully. but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required :true
10. Reboot the ESXi host and verify the upgarde version using the belwo command
vmware -l
That’s it. !!! I believe this is informative for you.Thanks for reading !!!