Upgrade from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 6.7 U2 via CLI and without ISO file

What:

Upgrade from ESXi 6.7 to ESXi 6.7 U2 without the need of downloading the ISO file. Every vSphere release comes with a number of patches, fixes and new features that are important to keep the harmony of your infrastructure.

This specific method is useful for testing environments, where a single or few ESXi has been deployed. Also, in the remote case that you don’t have or remember your VMware account.

To upgrade to the new ESXi version downloading the ISO file, follow my previous blog post. Just select the right patch - ESXi 6.7 U2. You must log in with your VMware account.

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.
• The ESXi must have an internet connection.

How:

1. Connect to your host using SSH terminal. You can use Putty, I like to use WinSSHTerm. Follow the instruction, type (copy and paste) the commands below.
2. Check your current version to make sure you have ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 6.7 U1 version.

Vmware -vl

3. Put your host in maintenance mode.

esxcli system maintenanceMode set –enable true

4. Create a new firewall rule to open outgoing HTTP requests:

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient

5. Type the following command to download and upgrade to ESXi 6.7 U2

esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-6.7.0-20190402001-standard

6. After the upgrade is completed disable the firewall rule.

esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient

7. Restart your host.

reboot

After booting, confirm the new version.

Reference:

VMware ESXi 6.7 Update 2 Release Notes