Upgrading Hosts with vSphere Update Manager
Upgrading vSphere ESXi to the newest versions when they become available is principally a three-stage process. Although ESXi 5.x and 6.x are fundamentally the same hypervisors, VUM 6.7 has been designed to only upgrade 6.x hosts to 6.7. You can upgrade either version of ESXi, but you will need to perform an additional step to get older 5.x hosts upgraded all the way to 6.0 or 6.5 and then on to 6.7. It's a process that requires a VUM 6.x server to get the 5.x hosts upgraded to 6.x prior to upgrading VUM itself to 6.7. You may then update any 6.x to 6.7 with ease.
Perform the following steps to upgrade a host server with VUM 6.0:
- Import an ESXi image and create a host upgrade baseline.
- Upgrade the host by remediating with the upgrade baseline.
- Upgrade the VMs' VMware Tools and hardware.
Strictly speaking, the last point is not part of the host upgrade procedure. However, most of the time when you upgrade VMs' hardware, it is...
