The following tutorial describes in simple steps the process to upgrade your ESXi 5.x hypervisor to version 6.0. In my case i was running ESXi 5.1 on a HP Proliant N54l microserver. We will be using SSH and the command line to perform the update. It’s a very simple process but you need to ensure that you are using absolute file paths, and remember these are case sensitive!
ESXi 6.0 Update 1 or lower hosts which are assigned a VMware vSphere Hypervisor license, all modification operations will fail silently. This issue has been resolved in ESXi 6.0 U2 and 5.5 Patch 8. ESXi 6.0 host before Update 2 which have a sub-domain name with large, shared cookies a web console session may fail to initialize. Once the VMware vCenter 6 Appliance is updated to Update 1, you can enjoy the new web admin interface. VCenter 6 Appliance Web Admin. Disclaimer: All the tutorials included on this site are performed in a lab environment to simulate a real world production scenario. Show VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.0.0 U2 Built-in web client InterfaceCreate VM demo. After finishing the IP address configuration, you are able to access the Vmware Web interface. Open a browser software, enter the IP address of your Vmware ESXi server and access web interface. On the prompt screen, enter the administrative login information. Burn the ESXi 5.5 update 1.ISO image to a CD. Boot the server from the ESXi 5.5 update 1 CD you just created. At the prompt, press Enter to proceed with the installation. Press to accept the ESXi 5.5 license. At the Select a Disk menu, press Enter to confirm the remote storage device and continue.
Esxi 6 Web Interface Url Shortener
Step 1. Download the ESXi / vSphere 6.0 General Availability Offline Depot from My VMware, alternatively if you don’t have a VMware account, you can download it here. The file you need to download is named:
VMware–ESXi–6.0.0–2494585–depot.zip
Step 2. Copy across the offline depot archive to a datastore, making note of the absolute path to the file location
Step 3. Enable SSH access on your ESXi host.
Open vSphere client and click on the ‘Configuration’ tab > Under ‘Software’ click on ‘Security Profile’ > Click ‘Properties’ > from the list select ‘SSH’ and click ‘Options’ > click ‘Start’ and then ‘OK’.
Step 4. Put your ESXi host into Maintenance mode.
From vSphere client right click on the ESXi host and click ‘Enter Maintenance Mode’
Step 5. Download putty. Open Putty and type the IP address of your ESXi host, select the ‘SSH’ radio button. Click ‘Open’. When prompted enter your SSH credentials for root user.
Step 6. At the command prompt paste the following commands (right click to paste, press return after each command):
vmware -l
esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/Datastore1/Update/VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip
The first command checks the current ESXi version number, you should be running v5.1 or later.
The second command performs the update, be sure to verify the absolute file path is correct, as recorded in step 2.
If successful the the update should complete after about 30 seconds. You will see a wall of text, at the top of which it will say something like:
Update Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Step 7. Reboot the ESXi host, at the command prompt type
Reboot
Step 8. Once the system has finished rebooting, open vSphere client. You will be prompted to update the vSphere client, follow the instructions on screen to download and install the latest version. You also now have access to a web based version of the vSphere client, it’s somewhat more limited in features, but useful nonetheless. You can install it using the following command:
esxcli software vib install–vhttp://download3.vmware.com/software/vmw-tools/esxui/esxui_signed.vib
Once installed you can access the web management page via /UI'>http://<ESXiServerIP>/UI
Esxi 6 Web Interface Url Configuration
That’s it, you have successfully upgraded your ESXi host to version 6.0, and can now manage your host via the new web management interface (or the vSphere client).
NT: Disable SSH access once done, for security.
You can use the vSphere Client to log in to vCenter Server and manage your vSphere inventory.
Тhe vSphere Client is automatically installed as part of the vCenter Server appliance deployment. This way, the vSphere Client always points to the same vCenter Single Sign-On instance.
Procedure
- Open a Web browser and enter the URL for your vCenter Server instance: https://vcenter_server_ip_address_or_fqdnAs an alternative, you can open a Web browser and enter the URL for the vSphere Client: https://vcenter_server_ip_address_or_fqdn/ui.
- If a warning message about a potential security risk appears, select to continue to the website.
Browser
Action Microsoft Edge - Click Details.
- Under the additional message that appears, click Go on to the webpage.
Mozilla Firefox - Click Advanced.
- Under the additional message that appears, click Accept the Risk and Continue.
Google Chrome - Click Advanced.
- Under the additional message that appears, click Proceed to vcenter_server_ip_address_or_fqdn.
- On the vSphere Welcome page, select Launch vSphere Client (HTML5).
- If the warning message about a potential security risk appears again, repeat Step 2.
- Enter the credentials of a user who has permissions on vCenter Server and click Login.
The vSphere Client connects to all the vCenter Server systems on which the specified user has permissions, and you can view and manage the vSphere inventory.
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