6.0.2

Table Of Contents
n
Make sure that sucient disk space is available on the host for the upgrade.
n
If a SAN is connected to the host, detach the Fibre Channel system before continuing with the
upgrade. Do not disable HBA cards in the BIOS.
3 Back up the host before performing an upgrade. If the upgrade fails, you can restore the host.
4 Depending on the upgrade option you choose, you might need to migrate or power o all virtual
machines on the host. See the instructions for your upgrade method.
5 After the upgrade, test the system to ensure that the upgrade completed successfully.
6 Apply a host's licenses. See Applying Licenses After Upgrading to ESXi 6.0,” on page 202.
7 Consider seing up a syslog server for remote logging, to ensure sucient disk storage for log les.
Seing up logging on a remote host is especially important for hosts with limited local storage.
vSphere Syslog Collector is included as a service in vCenter Server 6.0 and can be used to collect logs
from all hosts. See “Required Free Space for System Logging,” on page 52. For information about
seing up and conguring syslog and a syslog server, seing up syslog from the host proles interface,
and installing vSphere Syslog Collector, see the vSphere Installation and Setup documentation.
8 If the upgrade was unsuccessful and you backed up the host, you can restore the host.
Upgrade Options for ESXi 6.0
VMware provides several ways to upgrade ESXi 5.x hosts to ESXi 6.0 hosts.
The details and level of support for an upgrade to ESXi 6.0 depend on the host to be upgraded and the
upgrade method that you use. Verify support for the upgrade path from your current version of ESXi to the
version to which you are upgrading. See VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes at
hp://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/sim/interop_matrix.php.
You can upgrade a ESXi 5.x host, asynchronously released driver or other third-party customizations,
interactive upgrade from CD or DVD, scripted upgrade, or upgrade with vSphere Update Manager. When
you upgrade an ESXi 5.x host that has custom VIBs to version 6.0, the custom VIBs are migrated. See
“Upgrading Hosts That Have Third-Party Custom VIBs,” on page 141.
Methods supported for direct upgrade to ESXi 6.0 are:
n
vSphere Update Manager.
n
Interactive upgrade from CD, DVD, or USB drive.
n
Scripted upgrade.
n
vSphere Auto Deploy. If the ESXi 5.x host was deployed by using vSphere Auto Deploy, you can use
vSphere Auto Deploy to reprovision the host with an ESXi 6.0 image.
n
The esxcli command.
vSphere Update
Manager
vSphere Update Manager is software for upgrading, migrating, updating,
and patching clustered hosts, virtual machines, and guest operating systems.
vSphere Update Manager orchestrates host and virtual machine upgrades. If
your site uses vCenter Server, VMware recommends that you use
vSphere Update Manager. For instructions about performing an orchestrated
vSphere Upgrade
140 VMware, Inc.