Important Update - On Mar 20 2018, VMware VMSA-2018-0004.3 announced that CVE-2017-5715 (Spectre-2) mitigation is now included in the latest patch that you should be using instead of the older patch featured in the original article below. You'll find the newer article that features an even easier update method here:
Article below as it originally appeared.
VMware ESXi 6.5 Release Notes ESXi 6.5 | 15 NOV 2016 | ISO Build 4564106
Warning - vCenter/VCSA 6.x should be upgraded to 6.5 beforeupgrading your host(s) to ESXi 6.5!
All the background story on how this easy ESXCLI upgrade method came about was covered in my earlier article:
- How to easily update your VMware Hypervisor to ESXi 6.0 Update 2
Mar 16 2016
Benefits
- No new license needed to go from 6.0.x to 6.5!
- Users of the free hypervisor and folks who can't download the GA Offline bundle now have a path forward as well!
Prerequisites
Once you've completed ALL of the following preparation steps:
- upgraded to VCSA 6.5
- ensured your ESXi 6.0.x host has a working internet connection
- reviewed the release notes
- reviewed How to easily update your VMware Hypervisor to ESXi 6.0 Update 2 for the full back story that includes some warnings about potential gotchas/driver issues
- backed up the ESXi 6.0 you've already got, using something like one of the home-lab-friendly techniques such as using USB Image Tools, as detailed by Florian Grehl here
you can now safely continue with this one-liner approach to upgrading your lab environment.
Unsupported, at your own risk, see the full disclaimer at below left.
I personally tested upgrading from 6.0U2 to 6.5 my first time with the GA code in the live and (obviously) unrehearsed video below.
What's nice about this ESXCLI upgrade method is that its super simple and convenient, and you don't have to worry about logging in to My VMware and downloading your ESXi 6.5 ISO:
Name: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-6.5.0-4564106.x86_64.iso
Release Date: 2016-11-15
Build Number: 4564106
Upgrade
Download and upgrade to 6.5 using the patch directly from the VMware Online Depot, entire process including reboot is usually well under 15 minutes
- Open an SSH session (eg. PuTTY) to your ESXi 6.0.x server
(if you forgot to enable SSH, here's how) - Turn on maintenance mode, or ensure you've set your ESXi host to automatically gracefully shutdown all VMs upon host reboot, or shutdown all the VMs gracefully that you care about, including VCSA.
- Paste the line below into into your SSH session, then hit enter, waiting somewhere around 3 to 10 minutes for it to finish up, depending mostly on the the speed of the ESXi's connection to the internet, and a little on the speed of the storage media that ESXi is installed on:
- Optional - Depending upon your ESXi firewall configuration, if the above command results in a network related error, the first fix to try is this command:
then repeat step 3 above. More details about the firewall here, including a way to return to your prior state.
- If you turned on maintenance mode earlier, remember to turn maintenance mode off.
- Type reboot and hit return (to restart your ESXi server), or use your favorite ESXi UI to restart the host.
- After the reboot is done, it would be a good idea to test login using ESXi host client, pointing your browser to the IP or hostname of your just-graded server, to be sure everthing seems to be working right.
You're done! Free virtual serial ports by hdd software.
Special thanks to VMware ESXi Patch Tracker by Andreas Peetz at the VMware Front Experience Blog.
That's it! When the reboot is complete, you'll see for yourself that you now have the latest ESXi, Build 4564106, as pictured above. Now you have more spare time to read more TinkerTry articles!
By the way, you could use VMware Update Manager on a Windows system or VM, but for one-off upgrades typical in a small home lab, pasting these 1 or 2 lines of code is pretty darn easy.
Looking ahead, since VUM is now built into VCSA 6.5, this will add another way to do future upgrades and patches, even in a small home lab environment.
Potential SATA and Realtek NIC gotchas
If you find some of your SATA/AHCI datastores disappear from view after this upgrade, worry not, the VMFS datastores are still there, you just can't see them. This article should still save you:
- For ESXi 6.0, those ESXi 5.1 VIBs for ASMedia SATA ports and Realtek NICs still seem to be working (but unsupported)
Mar 04 2015
Video
Original article snippet, as originally published on Nov 20 2016, appears as it was, below.
Coming soon
It's here, see above!The TinkerTry'd easy-upgrade method just isn't ready yet, see why at VMware Front Experience Blog's
- VMware ESXi Patch Tracker
The ESXi 6.5.0 GA Imageprofile is not yet available in the VMware Online Depot. Subscribe here now to get notified at release time!
If VMware does decide to make ESXi 6.5 available up there in this same cloudy depot, it's likely you'll be using this simple one-liner, to get the job done:
but currently, it errors out with this message:
How about querying what bundles are available, just in case I got the bundle name wrong? See what pcrandom suggests:
Nope, no 6.5 versions listed there, at all. You can try for yourself, as this is just a harmless list command.
What to do? How to upgrade to 6.5 right now? No problem, just read this article for the somewhat more involved ISO download/mount method:
- How to Upgrade ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 via ISO
Nov 20 2016 by Vladan Seget at vladan.fr
Nov 24 2016 Update
The correct file now showed up on VMware's Respository, as seen in VMware ESXi Patch Tracker, which allowed me to get this all working, and make the edits to the article above.
See also at TinkerTry
How to easily update your VMware vCenter Server Appliance to VCSA 6.5
Nov 20 2016Mar 14 2016
VMware ESXi 6.5 first look at install/config featuring vSphere Host Client HTML5 Web UI
Nov 15 2016In VMware vSphere 6.5, missing functions in speedy HTML5 Web UI leaves us saddled with vSphere Web Client (Flash), C# Client still connects to hosts, but not to vSphere
Nov 16 2016
See also
ESXi 6.5 Release Notes for free license and white box users
Nov 24 2016 by Andreas Peetz at VMware Front ExperienceVMware ESXi Patch Tracker
Nov 24 2016 by Andreas Peetz at VMware Front Experience- VMware vSphere 6.5 Documentation Center - Upgrade or Update a Host with Image Profiles
VMware
If you would like to read my Basic VMware articles, they are listed at the end of this article for your convenience.
In this series of basic VMware articles for the Novice, I'll be showing you the basic VMware skills required to install, configure and deploy virtual machines using VMware's FREE VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi).
In this article we will show you HOW TO: Create your first Windows Virtual Machine on a VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) Host Server uisng the VMware Host Client. This procedure can be followed to install ANY Microsoft Windows Virtual Machines on earlier versions of VMware vSphere provided they are supported by the version of VMware vSphere. You may want to consult the the VMware Hardware Comparability Lists or HCL, see here.
1. Connect to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) or vSphere vCenter Server using the VMware Host or vSphere Web Client
Please see my previous article - HOW TO: Connect to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) using the vSphere (HTML5 Web) Host Client 6.5
2. Upload the Windows operating system ISO image file to the VMFS datastore
Please refer to my EE article on HOW TO: Upload an ISO image to a VMware datastore for use with VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) using the vSphere Host Client, and checking its MD5 checksum signature is correct.
If you have already downloaded a Windows operating system as an ISO image file from the internet (MSDN - Microsoft Developer Network or Microsoft Technet), there is no need to create new iso image file, if you have physical CD-ROM or DVD-ROM Windows media; Please refer to my EE article on HOW TO: Create an ISO CD-ROM/DVD-ROM image (*.iso), and MD5 checksum signature, for use with VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5)
In this example, we will use Microsoft Windows Server 2016, this can be uploaded to the datastore, esx001_local1_vmfs6, using the previous EE Article - HOW TO: Upload an ISO image to a VMware datastore for use with VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) using the vSphere Host Client, and checking its MD5 checksum signature is correct.
Please note and check the VMware Hardware Comparability Lists (HCL) here, to check your Operating System is compatible with VMware vSphere. Many operating systems fail to install because the operating system is not supported by the version of VMware vSphere being used. In the following screenshot from the HCL, we can clearly see this is supported for the version of VMware vSphere 6.5 we are using in this tutorial.
3. Creating the Windows Virtual Machine
Right Click Virtual Machine and select Create/Register VM. This will open up a wizard and guide you through the process of creating the virtual machine configuration.
After selecting Create New Virtual Machine, the Create New Virtual Machine dialogue box and wizard will be displayed. This allows you to specify your requirements for the virtual machine, the number of processors, the amount of memory, storage required, and network card, these are the basic requirements, which are needed to create a virtual machine. Take a few minutes to think about your virtual machine requirements, Ask yourself the question - What would you specify when purchasing a physical machine or server? These values can be changed and amended later, e.g. add additional processors, increase memory or storage space. It's much easier to grow storage than reduce it later, so my advice would be to start small, and later grow your resources, by looking at the performance of the virtual machine. In a previous EE Article, we discuss performance, see here HOW TO: Performance Monitor vSphere 4.x or 5.0. This is one of the many advantages of virtual machines, we have greater flexibility to add and remove resources, compared to a physical computer or server.We also have very fine controls, or granular controls over machine specifications, e.g. memory, most memory components in physical servers today are in 1GB DIMM increments, using virtualization, we can increase memory in 256MB or 512MB increments! This is not easy to complete with physical computers, we cannot cut a memory DIMM in half! The Create Virtual Machine Wizard, creates the configuration or template for us to install our operating system later. It includes some specification templates, based on the vendors minimum requirements for the Operating System selected.
Select Create a new virtual machine followed by next.
Enter a Name for the virtual machine and Click Next.
This is the name which will appear in the inventory, this is not to be confused with the operating systems hostname, which will be set, when we install the operating system. In the example I have entered the name 'My First Windows VM'.
Select the Guest OS Family, and Guest OS version. Leave the Compatibility set to ESXi 6.5 virtual machine. Click Next to continue.Click Next to continue, select the datastore to store the virtual machine configuration files and virtual disks and click Next to continue through the wizard
In my previous EE articles, we discussed datastore creation see here
HOW TO: Install and Configure VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5)
HOW TO: Connect to the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) using the vSphere (HTML5 Web) Host Client 6.5
Select the storage datastore to use to storage the virtual machine, followed by Next.
Customize Settings - Configure the virtual machine hardware and virtual machine additional options, and click Next to continue. Make sure you select the Datastore iso, you have already uploaded.
Vmware Tools Esxi 6.5
Select the required virtual disk size, this is the size of the disk for the operating system installation. A default size is provided based on vendors minimum recommendations. Please note, it's very easy to increase the disk size of a virtual machine after installation, please see my previous EE Article HOW TO: Resize a VMware (VMDK) Virtual Disk, However it's more difficult to shrink a virtual disk. So we would always recommend, starting small and growing later. The only VMware supported procedure to shrink a virtual disk, is to use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, and create a V2V, which is also covered in my previous EE Articles listed here
HOW TO: Synchronize changes when completing a P2V or V2V with VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1
HOW TO: P2V, V2V for FREE - VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.1
Click Finish to create the virtual machine configuration.
The virtual machine will be created.If you check the Host Inventory, you will see your Virtual Machine - 'My First Windows VM' listed in the inventory.
4. Installing Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Operating System in the Virtual Machine
Installing the Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Operating System in the virtual machine hosted on the VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5.1 (ESXi 6.5) Host Server is very similar, to installing the Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Operating System on a physical computer or server, with a few differences, which we will list below.
The very first time a virtual machines boots, its' BOOT order in the CMOS BIOS is set to CD-ROM. After the installation has been successful, this is reset to Hard Disk.
Right-Click the virtual machine 'My First Windows VM' and Select Power On. The virtual machine should automatically boot from the CD-ROM ISO image file. Then select the Console function so you can interact with the virtual machine.
The virtual machine should automatically boot from the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM ISO image file. The Console function is similar to the Keyboard/Video Machine (KVM) function in a datacentre, which allows you to toggle between console screens of computers, it allows you to interact with the virtual machine, with keyboard and mouse movements, and displays the screen. The Microsoft Windows Server 2016 installation start up process
Select the Language to install, Time and currency format, and Keyboard or input method; and Click Next to continue.
Language and Keyboard Selected
Click Install
The following screen will be displayed - Setup is starting
How To Create Vm Esxi 6.5
Enter Product Key when prompted or Skip it, and add it later.
Select the required version to install. I am going to install Windows Server 2016 Standard (Desktop Experience) e.g. with a GUI.
Accept the License Terms by ticking the box, and select Next to continue the installation
As this is a new operating system, we are installing, select Custom: Install Windows only (advanced).
Select the disk drive location for the operating system installation followed by Next
Installing Windows will start and copy files from the media to the virtual machine hard diskAfter the installation restarts, Windows will restart several times setting up devices
Type a password to be used as the Local Administrator password for the server, followed by Finish.
The Windows Server 2016 logon screen will appear.
Congratulations, you have successfully Created your first Windows Virtual Machine on a VMware vSphere Hypervisor 6.5 (ESXi 6.5) Host Server
It is recommended to install VMware Tools in the virtual machine. Please see my next article in this series HOW TO: Install VMware Tools for Windows on a VMware Windows virtual machine
Basic VMware Articles Series:
These articles are also applicable to VMware vSphere Hypervisor ESXi 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0.