I turned my lab back on!!, and guess what, it was a mess, I lost my vCenter server and well… I’ll stop complaining and jump back into the substance of this post.
Previous steps after losing the Host I had vCenter on
If this has happened to you either in production or in a lab environment, be sure it will not be nice, few of the things I had to deal with:
- DVS Server settings get lost
- Storage interfaces and initiators won’t delete
For the DVS pice, once you join your ESXI to the new vCenter, well the DVS disappears, and life is all good, but you need to make sure your vSwitches are all in order, and hopefully, you had a couple of them for backup in case you get locked out of your DVS
If you are not going to install vCenter again, well there are options, but not easy to find, in my case I did not find a good one and stopped looking for a solution when I decided to re-install vCenter. In this case, the CLI is your friend. Most of the recommendations is to use the vSphere client, yes the old one that just installs on windows. but that was not an option for stubborn me
The Storage, this one is tricky because it is the only one that does not get removed automatically because hey, it’s in use. Of course, all my LUNs were there, but dang! I could not remove it from the WebClient
I used the following articles to solve my issue:
http://buildvirtual.net/using-command-line-tools-to-configure-appropriate-vds-settings/ – I used BuildVirtual in conjunction with the KB from VMware –> https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1008127
Preparing for Upgrading to 6.7
Easy, if you have vCenter I guess that is half of the battle, if you don’t have vCenter, make sure that Keyboard and Monitor are ready. There are 2 methods of upgrading ESXi
- In front of the console
- From Update Center (vCenter required)
If you want to upgrade from the console, hopefully, you have either iDRAC (Dell), ILO(HP) or CIMC(Cisco) – but we are not going over this one, however, if you’d like to find out more on how to do it here is a good tutorial –> https://tinkertry.com/easy-update-to-esxi-67
From vCenter using update Center, well there are a lot of tutorials out there, but this is a new one, here in this blog, no referral needed!
Make sure you download the ESXI ISO
Goes without saying, you still need the media with the newer version. Since I’m feeling cutting edge today, I will download the latest and greatest?
Login to your vCenter Server
On the left go to Update Manager
Click ESXi images
Click Import, then browse and look for your image
Now go to Baselines, select New and then go to baseline
Give this baseline a name, please if you are in a lab make something creative, maybe you won’t use it anymore!
Go Next, and select the image you just uploaded
You will be presented with the Summary page of everything you need to do, there is little margin for error on this section so click finish unless you need to change that name back to something professional
Now let’s go to the main page of the host you are going to upgrade, click updates
Scroll down to Attached Baselines and click Attach Baseline or Baseline Group
Select your Upgrade Baseline and click Attach
Once attached click on remediate
There will be a EULA you need to accept and then you will have the opportunity to see a quick summary of what you have and what version you are installing
Boom and just like that your host will be upgraded to the latest version of ESXi
What’s next?
Well, I need to make count the fact that my lab is on and will continue to be on for a while.
Few Certs in the Pipeline:
Palo Alto Networks – PCNSE 9 –> https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/services/education/certification.html
Fortinet NSE4 –> https://training.fortinet.com/local/staticpage/view.php?page=nse_4
** Get back to my CCIE Security studies!
If all the planets align you will begin seeing a few more posts, but now from https://cybersecengineer.com – which eventually will become the new home for all my Security posts
About the Author:
Andres Sarmiento, CCIE # 53520 (Collaboration)
With more than 13 years of experience, Andres is specialized in Unified Communications and Collaboration technologies. Consulted for several companies in South Florida, also Financial Institutions on behalf of Cisco Systems. Andres has been involved in high-profile implementations including Cisco technologies; such as Data Center, UC & Collaboration, Contact Center Express, Routing & Switching, Security and Hosted IPT Service provider infrastructures.