VMware ESXi Standalone Update

In this post how to update the free version of VMware ESXi, when you don’t have vCenter Server to manage and update an ESXi server.

This article is my own version of an article written by Vladan Seget, you can find that article here.

The server to update has version 6.5.0 (Build 5310538).

First download the needed patches at the VMware site, even when you have the free version, download it with your VMware account. When you downloaded the free version, you should have an account.

Mark “update-from-esxi6.5-6.5_update01” and click [Download Selected].

Upload the downloaded file to a datastore on the ESXi server. In this example, the file is uploaded to datastore3.

The file is in its place.

Have the service SSH running.

Next “Enable console shell”.

Enter the server in maintenance mode.

With PuTTY or another tool, in this case I use “ssh” on an openSUSE client, connect to the ESXi server.

Change directory to /vmfs/volumes/datastore3 and enter “ls”. Here you can see the uploaded file.

Enter the next command:

esxcli software vib update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore3/update-from-esxi6.5-6.5_update01.zip

After a few moments the update is installed and the server needs to reboot.
“Host is not changed. Reboot is pending from previous transaction.”

Slightly different message from an update on another server:
“The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.”