How to Upgrade VMware ESXi 4.0 to ESXi 4.1

To upgrade VMware ESXi 4.0 host to ESXi 4.1, first you need to download the upgrade zip file from VMware. There are several methods to upgrade your ESXi but in my opinion using the vSphere CLI tool is by far the easiest. The versions listed in this post are the latest version available at the time of writing.

If you don’t have the vSphere CLI v4.1.0 installed, you can download it from VMware. Make sure that you download vSphere CLI, not PowerCLI. You will need the vSphere CLI utility to upgrade your ESXi host. You can install vSphere CLI utility on Windows XP and Vista. At the time of writing, Windows 7 is not supported. I installed it on Windows 7 but had problems running the utility. I used a Windows XP computer and it worked just fine for me.

When you start the utility, you may notice that it is starting in VMware\VMware vSphere CLI folder. You need to be in the Perl\bin folder where the utility resides. One solution is to add the Perl\bin folder to the path and then close and re-open the command prompt. If you have added the VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin to the path and are unable to execute the vihostupdate.pl utility, just simply change the directory to VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin and then execute the command. You can type vihostupdate.pl –help for help with the syntax.

Execute the following command to upgrade ESXi4.0 host to ESXi 4.1.

NOTE: In the blog post what may look like a hyphen is actually two dashes. Make sure you type two hyphens before the words server, install and bundle. For some reason my WordPress blog is converting the double hyphens “- -” to one solid dash “–“.

vihostupdate.pl –server Server_IP_Address –install –bundle Full_Path_to_Zip_File

For example, enter the following command.

vihostupdate.pl –server 10.0.1.200 –install –bundle “C:\Source Files\VMware\ESXi 4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip”

where 10.10.1.200 is the IP address of the ESXi server. If the path includes spaces then use quotes, as shown in the example above. Do not enter the two dashes “–” before the path. Your command will look something like this.

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin>vihostupdate.pl –server 10.0.1.200 –install –bundle “C:\Source Files\VMware\ESXi 4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip”
Enter username: root
Enter password:
Please wait patch installation is in progress …
The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

Note: Your password won’t be displayed. After you press enter it can take a very long time to install the software so be patient.

Verify the bulletins are installed on the ESXi host by running the following command.

vihostupdate.pl –server 10.0.1.200 –query

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\bin>vihostupdate.pl –server 10.0.1.200 –query
Enter username: root
Enter password:
———Bulletin ID——— —–Installed—– —————-Summary—————–
ESXi410-GA                    2010-12-11T02:24:28 ESXi upgrade Bulletin
ESXi410-GA-esxupdate          2010-12-11T02:24:28 ESXi pre-upgrade Bulletin

You will be prompted to enter the username and password again.

Reboot the ESXi host by using the reboot command.

vicfg-hostops.pl –server 10.0.1.200 –o reboot

The letter before reboot is O, not zero. You will be notified that the host rebooted successfully.

Congratulations! You have upgraded your ESXi 4.0 host to ESXi 4.1 successfully.

Copyright ©2010 Zubair Alexander. All rights reserved.