Tag: Upgrade

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Host Upgrade fails with “Cannot execute upgrade script on host”

I recently had the pleasue to time-warp a dinosaur upgrade an old ESXi 6.0 host to ESXi 6.7. Right after I triggered remediation with a current ESXi 6.7 iso image, I got an error message:

Cannot execute upgrade script on host

That message isn’t really specific. If you google it you’ll probably find a dozen possible reasons tor the failure. That can be:

None of the issues above did fit my observed problem. A good startpoint should be a look into vua.log on the affected host.

less /var/log/vua.log

Unfortunately that didn’t help either. So we had (again) a closer look at the VMware upgrade path matrix. A direct host upgrade from ESXi 6.0 to ESXi 6.7U3 is supported but while we re-checked the matrix our attention was drawn to a little footnote.

KB 76555 says there’s an issue with expired VIB certificates on hosts below a specific build numer.

  • ESXi 6.0 GA before build 9239799
  • ESXi 6.5 GA before build 8294253

In fact our ESXi host 6.0 had a build level of 7967664 (U3e) which is in the critical range. So we had to install some patches up to July 2018 (ESXi600-201807001). After that the upgrade to ESXI 6.7U3 went flawlessly.

What went wrong?

Of course we did check the matrix during the planning phase in early March 2020. That’s a standard operating procedure. Unfortunately something has changed in the meantime (the footnote was added). KB 76555 was updated in May 2020 and the issue affects upgrades to versions of ESXi 6.7 beyond April 28th 2020.

Take home message: Check your design and matrices again right before the projects starts.

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Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance to vSphere 7

Recently I’ve upgraded my homelab from 6.7U3 to vSphere7. The workflow is straightforward and very easy. The VMware Design team did a very good job with the UI.

First steps

I cannot point that out enough: check the VMware HCL. Just because your system is supported under your current vSphere version, doesn’t mean it’ll be supported under vSphere7 too. On the day I’ve upgraded, vSphere7 was brand new and there were just a few entries in the HCL. But it’s a homelab and if something breaks I don’t care to rebuild it from scratch. Don’t do this in production!

Although my Supermicro E300-9D is not yet certified for version 7.0, it works like a charm. I guess it’s just a matter of time, because the VMware Nano-Edge cluster is based on that hardware.

Before we can start, you need to download the vCenter Server Appliance 7.0 (VCSA) from VMware downloads (Login required). You also need to have new license keys for vCenter, ESXi and vSAN (if yor cluster is hyperconverged).

Continue reading “Upgrade vCenter Server Appliance to vSphere 7”
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vShield to NSX migration

Replacing deprecated vShield by NSX for vSphere

VMware vShield is part of the vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) suite. Its latest version 5.5 has reached EOGS (end of general support) in September 2016 and has been replaced by NSX for vSphere.

We still see quite a lot of vShield installations in productive environments. Mainly used for agentless guest introspection together with security solutions like Trendmicro DeepSecurity,  McAfee Move or others. Now that many customers consider migrating from vSphere 6.0 to vSphere 6.5, they have to face the fact that vShield is no longer supported from vSphere 6.5 onwards. And it is crucial to take product compatibility into account. There is a relationship between different vSphere, NSX and security product versions.

That’s why I show different migration paths in this blog article. Continue reading “vShield to NSX migration”