Upgrade from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 6.7 U2 using VMware Update Manager

What:

Upgrade from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 6.7 U2 using VMware Update Manager. Every vSphere release comes with a number of patches, fixes and new features that are important to keep the harmony of your infrastructure.

This method is the one you need to use for ESXi clusters and productions environments. VMware will automatically put your ESXi in maintenance mode, migrate your VMs to available hosts, then upgrade and reboot the hosts (host by host).

You can also upgrade the ESXi via CLI, and you have two options:

• Upgrade downloading the ISO file.
• Upgrade without the need the ISO file or any downloads.

What's New

• Solarflare native driver: ESXi 6.7 Update 2 adds Solarflare native driver (sfvmk) support for Solarflare 10G and 40G network adaptor devices, such as SFN8542 and SFN8522.
• Virtual Hardware Version 15: ESXi 6.7 Update 2 introduces Virtual Hardware Version 15 which adds support for creating virtual machines with up to 256 virtual CPUs. For more information, see VMware knowledge base articles 1003746 and 2007240.
• Standalone ESXCLI command package: ESXi 6.7 Update 2 provides a new Standalone ESXCLI package for Linux, separate from the vSphere Command Line Interface (vSphere CLI) installation package. The ESXCLI, which is a part of the vSphere CLI, is not updated for ESXi 6.7 Update 2. Although the vSphere CLI installation package is deprecated for this release and is still available for download, you must not install it together with the new Standalone ESXCLI for Linux package. For information about downloading and installing the Standalone ESXCLI package, see VMware {code}.
• In ESXi 6.7 Update 2, the Side-Channel-Aware Scheduler is updated to enhance the compute performance for ESXi hosts that are mitigated for speculative execution hardware vulnerabilities. For more information, see VMware knowledge base article 55806.
• ESXi 6.7 update 2 adds support for VMFS6 automatic unmap processing on storage arrays and devices that report to ESXi hosts an unmap granularity value greater than 1 MB. On arrays that report granularity of 1 MB and less, the unmap operation is supported if the granularity is a factor of 1 MB.
• ESXi 6.7 update 2 adds VMFS6 to the list of supported file systems by the vSphere On-disk Metadata Analyzer (VOMA) to allow you to check and fix issues with VMFS volumes metadata, LVM metadata, and partition table inconsistencies.

Prerequisites:

• First, you must upgrade the VCSA. So be sure that your VCSA is on the 6.7 U2 version.
• If the upgrade target is an ESXi cluster, is recommended to enable DRS.
• Download the ESXi ISO Image.

How:

@ VCSA - vSphere Client

1. Go to Menu / Update Manager / ESXi image / Import

2. Browse for the ISO image and click Import.
3. Wait until the ESXi Image is loaded.

4. On ESXi images, select the newly loaded image and click New Baseline.

5. Name the new Baseline and click Next.

6. Select the loaded image one more time.

7. Check the summary and click Next.

@ ESXi cluster / ESXi host

1. Select the cluster or host to apply the upgrade.
2. Select Updates / Attache / Attach Baseline or Baseline Group.

3. Select the Baseline previously created and click Attach.

4. On Updates, click Check Compliance.

5. Under Host Updates, select the new baseline and click Remediate.

6. Accept the EULA and click OK.

7. Select the host or cluster and click Remediate.

8. Wait until your hosts are updated. This could take a while depending on how many hosts and VMs you have.

Reference:

VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 2 Release Notes