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ESXi host upgrade methods
15 Upgrading to Dell EMC vSphere and vSAN version 7.0 | Technical white paper | 395
3 ESXi host upgrade methods
VMware provides several ways to upgrade ESXi version 6.5.x and version 6.7.x hosts to ESXi 7.0.
3.1 ISO-based upgrade (manual and automated)
There are multiple ways to upgrade your ESXi clusters using an ISO-based upgrade method.
Dell EMC provides iDRAC vMedia options to connect an ISO image. You can then boot from it and upgrade
manually by following on-screen options.
In the screenshot below, the options are provided to the user where you can preserve the existing VMFS
datastore to retain the data and VMs stored in the datastore during migration.
ISO-based upgrade options
For an automated upgrade procedure, see the Installing or Upgrading Hosts by Using a Script.
3.2 vSphere Life Cycle Manager (vLCM)
In vSphere 7.0, vLCM encompasses the functionality that Update Manager provided in previous vSphere
releases and enhances it by adding new features and possibilities for ESXi lifecycle management at a cluster
level.
vLCM is a service that runs in vCenter Server. Upon deploying the vCenter Server appliance, the vLCM user
interface becomes automatically enabled in the HTML5- based vSphere Client.
Follow these steps to upgrade the ESXi image:
1. Before upgrading the ESXi image from 6.5.x or 6.7.x to 7.0, download the ESXi image from
www.dell.com/support.
2. After downloading the latest 7.0 image, select the Update Manager tab in the menu under vSphere
Client and import the image under the ESXi images tab under Lifecycle Manager.
3. Click Browse to find the downloaded ESXi 7.0 ISO image downloaded from VMware and click
Import.