After a security scan showed vulnerabilities, a recent client of mine requested the above update. The target server was a stand alone HP DL360 running ESXi version 5.0 (GA). The upgrade was performed with the following procedure, which should work equally as well for other ESXi versions. A system reboot is required.

Acquire the Update

Go to https://www.vmware.com/patchmgr/findPatch.portal and login. Select “ESXi” and version “5.0.0” from the drop down menus, and click Search.

The results will include many updates, for example 01, 02, 03 etc. Select your update of interest (in this case 03) and download the large zip file (600 MB in this case).

Install the Update

Having downloaded the update file, transfer it to your ESXi system of interest, placing it in a local data store thereon.

Within Vsphere (or Vcenter), you will need to activate the ssh and ESXi shell services, (at least temporarily), if they are not already running.

Ssh in from another system so that you get the familiar Busybox ESXi shell environment. A single ESXi command performs the update:

# esxcli software vib install -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/update-from-esxi5.0-5.0_update03.zip 
Installation Result
   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
   Reboot Required: true
   VIBs Installed: VMware_bootbank_ehci-ehci-hcd_1.0-3vmw.500.1.11.623860, VMware_bootbank_esx-base_5.0.0-3.41.1311175, VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_5.0.0-2.26.914586, VMware_bootbank_ipmi-ipmi-si-drv_39.1-4vmw.500.2.26.914586, ...

The output from the command is larger than shown, detailing the many VIBs which are installed as part of the update.

Reboot the System

In the ESXi shell:

# reboot

After a few minutes, you can log back into the blade with Vsphere and you should see the new build number, which was 1311175 in this case.

Don’t forget to start up your virtual machines, if they are not already running.

If it is not your policy to run the ssh server and the ESXi shell on the target system, and you enabled these to perform the upgrade, don’t forget to disable them now.

Done.