Introduction

I am running several ESXi 4.0 servers on our test lab. Unfortunately the VSphere Client that can be downloaded from the ESXi server doesn’t install on Windows 7. One way to get Windows 7 support in this situation is to upgrade the ESXi server to 4.1. Here are the basic steps for doing this. For more information visit the following VMWare Communities forum thread: http://communities.vmware.com/message/1571775.

Step 1:

Download the upgrade patch from VMWare. The name of the patch file is upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip.

Also download and install the VSphere Command Line Interface CLI. The CLI is basically a set of Perl scripts that run on Windows using the ActivePerl runtime. ActivePerl will get installed on Windows during the CLI install.

Step 2:

Put your ESXi 4.0 Server in Maintenance mode. Right mouse click on the ESXi Server node in VSphere client and choose the “Maintenance Mode” menu option.

Figure 1: ESXi 4.0 Server in maintenance mode

Step 3:

Copy the file upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip to a location that you are going to refer to in the next step. In my example I am copying the file to D:\ESXi4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip.

Step 3:

Open a CMD command prompt and change the directory to something like: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin> (This is the path where the script vihostupdate.pl is installed).

Next type the following commands and use the IP address of your ESXi server and the location of the patch file from Step 3.

vihostupdate.pl --server 45.45.45.12 -i -b D:\ESXi4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip
-B ESXi410-GA-esxupdate

Provide your user name and password for logging on to the ESXi server.

Next type:

vihostupdate.pl --server 45.45.45.12 -i -b D:\ESXi4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip
-B ESXi410-GA

Provide your user name and password for logging on to the ESXi server.

Here is the complete CMD prompt transcript:

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vihostupdate.pl --server 45.45.45.12 -i -b D:\ESXi4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.260247-release.zip
-B ESXi410-GA-esxupdate
Enter username: root
Enter password:
Please wait patch installation is in progress ...
Host updated successfully.

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\Perl\samples\host>vihostupdate.
pl --server 45.45.45.12 -i -b D:\ESXi4.1\upgrade-from-ESXi4.0-to-4.1.0-0.0.26024
7-release.zip -B ESXi410-GA
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 c
hanges to be effective.

C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>

Ausblick

It is that simple.