Easy ESXi 5.5 upgrade via command line

ESXi 5.5 was just released general availability (GA) on Sunday (9/22) and I’m itching to upgrade the home lab to run the latest version with all it’s goodies. I wanted to try upgrading my hosts without having to go through the same process that I followed setting up ESXi on the NUC in the first place, injecting custom NIC drivers, etc.

Enter the command line…

  1. Move all VM’s from the host and then put the host into Maintenance Mode.
  2. Go to the Configuration tab > Security Profile and Enable SSH under Services.
    ssh enabled
  3. Under Firewall, enable httpClient (outbound http).
    httpClient enable
  4. Open PuTTY (or other SSH client) and SSH into your host.
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VMware ESXi 5 home lab upgrade

In the past I’ve been using a single server to run my VMware ESXi home lab. it was slow, old, big and loud. I’ve been meaning to upgrade my home lab for a while and just never got around to it, until now! When looking for new hardware I wanted the servers to be as compact as possible, quiet, and low energy usage as possible while still having some horsepower.

I debated on going the whitebox solution as I build all my own desktops anyway, I also looked at several other solutions such as the HP ML310e server, Shuttle XH61V barebones machine, but ultimately decided to go with two Intel NUC i5’s.

Intel NUC i5 and 16GB ram

Intel NUC i5 DC53427HYE Features:

  • Uses very little energy
  • Completely quiet
  • Supports up to 16GB RAM
  • A dual core CPU that scores nearly 3,600 in PassMark benchmarking
  • Includes vPro which allows me to easily run both NUC’s headless
  • Extremely small, nearly 4 1/2″ inch square footprint

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Install ESXi 5.1 from a USB Flash Drive

Many servers already come with a DVD/CD-ROM drive or some kind of ability to virtually mount an ISO image from a network share onto your server to then install ESXi. However, not all do or you just want to have your ESXi image readily available. Here’s a quick step by step instructions on how to use a USB flash drive to install ESXi.

  1. Download ESXi 5.1 from VMware (if you haven’t already) as well as UNettbootin.
  2. Plug in your USB Flash Drive.
  3. Open UNetbootin and select “Diskimage”, set Type to “USB Drive”, select Drive letter of your USB flash drive, and set the path of your ESXi 5.1 ISO image. Then click on “OK”.
    unetbootin setup
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