VMware ESXi upgrade plan

[ildevm]

Hello

I would like to share with all of you a scenario that I have at work.

Recently i have started to work in a new project to upgrade a VMware ESXi environment that is currently in version 6.7 to the version 6.7 U3 in a Blade C3000 chassis with 8 ESXi nodes (on a vSphere cluster) all of them running on HPE Proliant BL460c Gen9 servers.  

The hardware used in the environment is the following:

Blade C3000 enclosure with only one Onboard Administrator, 2 Virtual Connect Modules Flexfabric 10/10D not redundant with a HP FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 536FLB Adapter and 1 mezzanine card HP Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 366M Adapter using only 2 ports. Onboard administrator is on version 4.50. Virtual Connect is on version 4.45. Proliant BL460c Gen9 are using the SPP 2017.07.02.

The shared storage used in the VMware cluster is provided by a HPE 3PAR 8200 array with 2 controller nodes (with the Operating system version 3.2.2.612 (MU4)) through iSCSI. There are 4 iscsi target ports (all in the same vlan) to provide the virtual volumes used in the VMware environment.

The Vmware version installed on all VMware ESXi nodes is not the image provided for HPE (VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-9484548-HPE-Gen9plus-670.10.3.5.6-Sep2018.iso) but is the generic image provided by Vmware (ESXi 6.7 GA 8169922 released in date 4/17/2018).

I have been reading the HPE documentation to plan the upgrade from the current version 6.7 to the latest 6.7 versión (6.7 U3) but using the HPE Vmware images and the SPP mapped to each Vmware HPE image.

I understand the proper way to plan the upgrade is the following:

1) Upgrade the Vmware Operating system with the image provided for HPE (VMware-ESXi-6.7.0-9484548-HPE-Gen9plus-670.10.3.5.6-Sep2018.iso) in all nodes using Vmware update manager

2) Upgrade all components of the Chasis C3000 (O.A, FW BL servers) to the mapped SPP version for HPE vmware ESXi 6.7 à SPP 2018.11.0 using SUM. At this point I have not clear if I have to upgrade VC using Virtual Connect Support utility because the VC modules will not be upgraded by SUM (they are not redundant) or is possible to upgrade VC in the last upgrade (when Vmware is on 6.7 U3 version)

3) Once all components are upgraded using the VMware 6.7 HPE image and the mapped SPP, upgrade Vcenter Server Appliance to the latest version 6.7 U3

4) Upgrade the Vmware operating system to the 6.7 U3 using the image provided for HPE in all nodes using Vmware Update Manager

5) Upgrade  all components of the Chasis C3000 (O.A, FW BL servers) to the mapped SPP version for HPE vmware ESXi 6.7 U3 à SPP 2020.03.0 using SUM. At this point upgrade VC using VCSU to the latest version.

I would like to know if there is something missing or incorrect in the proposed upgrade process

Thanks in advance

Regards

[RaviTyagi]

Hello ildevm ,

Greetings of the day !

Please upgrade the esxi using the details as per the below mentioned link .

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.update_manager.doc/GUID-EF6BEE4C-4583-4A8C-81B9-5B074CA2E272.html 

Regards,

RRT 

I am an HPE Employee