{"id":2752,"date":"2018-10-28T19:19:18","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T00:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/osric.com\/chris\/accidental-developer\/?p=2752"},"modified":"2018-10-28T19:19:18","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T00:19:18","slug":"esxi-upgrade-from-5-5-to-6-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/osric.com\/chris\/accidental-developer\/2018\/10\/esxi-upgrade-from-5-5-to-6-7\/","title":{"rendered":"ESXi upgrade from 5.5 to 6.7"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESXi 5.5 recently reached end-of-support (see End of General Support for vSphere 5.5<\/a>), but my sales rep informed me that I was eligible for a free upgrade. Great! I set about doing just that.<\/p>\n

First of all, I should note that you can’t upgrade directly from 5.5 to 6.7, so I upgraded to 6.5 first. I ran into several missteps along the way, which I have documented here:<\/p>\n

Short version:<\/strong> use Rufus on Windows to build your bootable installation USB flash drive! Even if you are not a Windows user, find a Windows machine or download a Windows VM and use Rufus to build your boot media. Seriously, use Rufus and skip to the end of this article for a couple extra tips.<\/p>\n

I found a succinct article, Create an ESXi 6.5 installation USB under two minutes<\/a>, but the steps listed there expect you to use a Windows application to build the USB media. I was using MacOS, so I went looking for the MacOS alternative and found How to create a bootable VMware ESXi USB drive on Macs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After following the steps there, I plugged the USB flash drive into my server, used the BIOS boot menu to boot from the USB drive, and got the following error:<\/p>\n

Booting from Hard drive C:\r\n\r\nNon-system disk\r\nPress any key to reboot<\/code><\/pre>\n
I had run into a non-fatal error when using fdisk<\/code>, maybe that had something to do with it? The error message was:<\/p>\n
fdisk: could not open MBR file \/usr\/standalone\/i386\/boot0: No such file or directory<\/code><\/pre>\n
I also read that copying the files from the ISO to the USB using cp<\/code> was not recommended, so I tried using dd<\/code> as well:<\/p>\n
$ sudo dd if=~\/Downloads\/VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.7.0.update01-10302608.x86_64.iso of=\/dev\/rdisk2 bs=1m<\/code><\/pre>\n
After that, I got a different error message when trying to boot from the USB drive:<\/p>\n
No boot device available or operating system detected.\r\nCurrent boot mode is set to BIOS.\r\nPlease ensure a compatible bootable media is available.<\/code><\/pre>\n
Next I tried VMWare’s own documentation: Format a USB Flash Drive to Boot the ESXi Installation or Upgrade<\/a><\/p>\n
This method required a Linux host with syslinux installed. I had a CentOS 7.5 host available, and installed syslinux 4.05 via yum<\/code>:<\/p>\n
$ sudo yum install syslinux<\/code><\/pre>\n
When I booted from the USB drive, I got the following error message:<\/p>\n
menu.c32: not a COM32R image\r\nboot:<\/code><\/pre>\n
I searched for that error and found the post Cannot boot from USB disk with “not a COM32R image” error<\/a> on AskUbuntu, so I tried that:<\/p>\n
[tab] install hddimage\r\nboot: install<\/code><\/pre>\n
Same error.<\/p>\n
The error mentioned menu.c32<\/code> specifically, so I copied \/usr\/share\/syslinux\/menu.c32<\/code> and \/usr\/share\/syslinux\/mboot.c32<\/code> to the USB key, overwriting the version from the VMWare ISO image. (There was also a safeboot.c32<\/code> on the USB key, but no corresponding file in \/usr\/share\/syslinux<\/code>.)<\/p>\n
This time booting from the USB drive got slightly farther:<\/p>\n
ESXi-6.7.0-201819929910 standard installer\r\nBoot from local disk\r\n\r\nPress (Tab) to edit options\r\nAutomatic boot in 1 second...\r\n\r\nLoading -c...failed!\r\nNo files found!\r\nboot:<\/code><\/pre>\n
I also tried keeping the mboot.c32<\/code> file from the VMWare ISO and replacing just the menu.c32<\/code> file, but that did not help.<\/p>\n
I found some suggestions that VMWare is very picky about the version of syslinux that is used, so I also compiled a newer version of syslinux, 6.02, which is specifically mentioned in the VMWare documentation I was following (“For example, if you downloaded Syslinux 6.02, run the following commands”<\/em>). That didn’t help either.<\/p>\n
I raised a cry for help on the VMWare community forums, and someone chimed in right away and advised me to give up on Linux just use Rufus on Windows. I fired up a Windows 2012r2 VM — if you don’t have one, you can download an ISO from the Microsoft Evaluation Center<\/a> and install one — and downloaded and installed Rufus<\/a>. (Rufus looks a little sketchy, but is vouched for by many sane and security-minded people.)<\/p>\n
In just a couple minutes, I had working boot media installed on my USB flash drive!<\/p>\n
I booted my VMWare host and got a new error during the upgrade process:<\/p>\n
Error(s)\/Warning(s) Found During System Scan\r\n\r\nThe system encountered the following error(s).\r\n\r\nError(s)\r\n\r\n<CONFLICTING_VIBS ERROR: Vibs on the host are conflicting with vibs in metadata. Remove the conflicting vibs or use Image Builder to create a custom ISO providing newer versions of the conflicting vibs.  ['LSI_bootbank_scsi-mpt3sas_04.00.00l00.lvmw-1OEM.500.0.0.472560', 'LSI_bootbank_scsi-mpt3sas_04.00.00l00.lvmw-1OEM.500.0.0.472560']>\r\n\r\nUse the arrow keys to scroll\r\n\r\n(F9) Back (F11) Reboot<\/code><\/pre>\n
A Reddit post, Trying to remove VIB<\/a>, pointed out that the driver referenced by the VIB (vSphere Installation Bundle) is for hardware that isn’t compatible with my Dell hardware, so I would be safe to remove it. I removed it using the ESX command-line interface:<\/p>\n
# esxcli software vib remove -n=scsi-mpt3sas<\/code><\/pre>\n
After that I was able to boot the system from the USB drive and upgrade the ESXi installation to 6.5.<\/p>\n
A few additional notes:<\/p>\n