The procedure to upgrade the ESXi version that is currently installed on servers in the Bare Metal Orchestrator cluster is similar to the procedure used to provision servers. During the ESXi operating system upgrade, you can optionally overwrite the existing operating system with a fresh installation.
- Upgrade the current ESXi operating system version on one or multiple servers in the cluster. For information about version compatibility, see VMWare vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) interoperability matrix.
- Overwrite the existing ESXi operating system version on one or multiple servers with a fresh installation of the ESXi operating system.
- Upgrade the current ESXi operating system version on one or multiple servers and simultaneously deploy new servers with the upgrade ESXi operating system version.
- Verify the operating system update.
For more information about operating system deployments and minimum space requirements, see Operating system deployment.
Operating system upgrade workflow
- Upload the ESXi ISO image of the target version to the web server using the Bare Metal Orchestrator CLI, see Upload images and binary files to the web server.
- Create a media object that references the target ESXi ISO in the web server. For more information, see Create a media object.
- Update the ESXi operating system version on one or multiple servers and optionally overwrite the existing operating system deployment simultaneously by updating the Operating system attributes. The following table describes the procedures that are used to upgrade the operating system.
Table 26. Upgrading ESXi operating system version Operation Description Update the ESXi operating system version on a server Specify the name of the media object that references the target operating system ISO when you edit the server, see Edit the server configuration.
Optionally, add the overwriteinstallation attribute to the server YAML file if you want to overwrite the existing ESXi version with a fresh installation of the specified operating system. For more information, see Operating system attributes.
Update the ESXi operating system version on multiple servers Specify the name of the media object that references the target operating system ISO in a hardware profile and follow the procedure to provision multiple servers. See Create hardware profiles and Edit hardware profile configuration. Optionally, add the overwriteinstallation attribute to the hardware profile YAML file if you want to overwrite the existing ESXi version with a fresh installation of the specified operating system. For more information, see Operating system attributes.
Note: Servers you target in the hardware profile that do not have the ESXi operating system installed get the upgrade version of the operating system applied. Servers that do have an older version of the ESXi operating system installed are upgraded.
Verify if the upgrade is successful on a server View servers and server status Verify if the upgrade is successful on multiple servers View hardware profiles CAUTION: The server reboots several times during the upgrade. Do not manually shut down the server or interrupt the upgrade process.
Pre-requisites
- The server hardware must meet the requirements of the upgrade ESXi version and have enough free storage space available for the operating system upgrade.
- Stop all VMs on the ESXi host before starting the ESXi upgrade process.
- The host must be put in to maintenance mode.
- If vMotion is not enabled, we recommend taking a backup of your host and your resources.
- If the ESXi host is managed by a vCenter, the vCenter version must be higher than or the same as the target ESXi version. For example, VMware vCenter 7.0 can manage ESXi 7.0, and ESXi 6.5, but vCenter 6.5 cannot manage ESXi 7.0 hosts. If your vCenter version is lower than the upgrade ESXi version, you must upgrade the vCenter version before proceeding to upgrade the ESXi operating system.