Important Note - update your VCSA before your ESXi Servers!
-
Open an SSH session to your ESXi server
-
Put your system into Maintenance Mode and allow the VMs to migrate or suspend
esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
-
Show available images from the VMware update server and select the one you require
esxcli software sources profile list -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml | sort -r
-
The following line will enable http connections through the ESXi server firewall to allow the update to take place
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
-
Run the following command in the SSH session, replacing ESXi-6.0.0-20161104001-standard with the update package you require from step 3. This may take a while depending on download speed etc.
esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-6.0.0-20161104001-standard -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml
-
Once complete, we can re-enable the firewall
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e false -r httpClient
-
Reboot your ESXi server with the
reboot
command -
Once your server comes back up, we can now disable Maintenance Mode.
esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true
Once complete, all you VMs should redistribute themselves (if you are running a DRS cluster) or resume and you can continue to upgrade the remaining hosts within your cluster.