Upgrading ESXi 4.0 to ESXi 4.1

If you search on the internet you would find many communities post, blogs and web site about “How to upgrade ESXi 4.0 to ESXi 4.1”.
Well, thats true but I’m writing my own experience with ESXi 4.0 which has Cisco Nexus 1000v (trial of course) and it’s upgrade process.
the process and steps can be find using these links:
KB 1022140
Upgrading ESXi 4.0 U1 to ESXi 4.1
I read it from KB and web sites as most of us doing and went trough all the steps as they said.
If you have standalone version which is not connected to vCenter and you can’t use VMware Update Manager (VUM), you have to get and use VMware vSphere CLI or VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) for upgrading.
I downloaded and installed the VMware vSphere CLI before so I’m just used the vihostupdate.pl which will install as part of vSphere CLI.
The command should be like this:
vihostupdate.pl –server IP/Name –install –bundle BundleName

But as the screenshot showing, it’s finished unsuccessfully with an error.
Requested VIB deb_vmware-esx-firmware_4.1.0-0.0.260247 conflicts with the host
I listed all updates and bundle which I installed before and I just notice about Cisco Nexus 1000v which remained on my host from my previous tests and if you checked the sources I write before (on top of this page) you can find same error on the community.
Listing bundles can be done by using the following command:
vihostupdate.pl –server IP/Name –query
So I decided to remove the Cisco Nexus 1000v from my host and retrying to upgrade it.
for removing the specific bundle the following command should be use:
vihostupdate.pl –server IP/Name -r -B BundleName
The image below showing both VMware vCLI (vSphere CLI) which finished the removal job as well as vSphere Client wich showing the “Recent Tasks”.
And as image showing the remval task would be appear as “XXX host.PatchManager.Unistall.label not found XXX” on the Tasks list.

After making sure about removal of Cisco Nexus 1000v, I’m tried to install the upgrade pack again by running the same command as before:
vihostupdate.pl –server IP/Name –install –bundle BundleName
In the following image “Query” task is related to “vihostupdate.pl –query” which I ran for checking the remval and also “Check” and “Install” tasks are related the “vihostupdate.pl –install” from VMware vCLI.

After a while (about 5 minutes) the upgrade process finished successfully as can be see on the image below.

After finishing the upgrade task I get the query for list of all bundle I have on my host and the result is this picture.
Upgrading from ESX/ESXi 4.0 to ESX/ESXi 4.1 requiers system to be rebooted as this message can be seen from previous image and the “Reboot Required” Sing on the “Summary” tab of host.

While I’m using “whitebox” as host and custome “oem.tgz” for loading my drivers and other feature, I was worried about it, if the oem.tgz from ESXi 4.0 going to work on the ESXi 4.1 or not!
And the good news is it working fine as you can see it’s completely up and running. (I’m connected to it, it one proof 😉 )

It’s all the process it takes for upgrading from ESXi 4.0 to ESXi 4.1.
If you are not using ESXi 4.1 yet, I’m highly recommend to upgrade to it:

• Upgrading process is quick and easy, if you are not using Cisco Nexus 1000v like me 😉
• Achieving higher performance
• Getting more usage from your host
• You can use or at least test lot’s of new feature which comes with this version

More Info:

–help option can be used to view different options which can come after vihostupdate.pl or “VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface Documentation” can be checked for more information.