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How to Upgrade to ESXi 8 from ESXi 7 | 3 Ways
With the ESXi 8.0 release now available for download, many may consider upgrading ESXi 7 to 8. Let’s look at the different ways for upgrading ESXi 7 to 8.
By Crystal / Updated on July 19, 2024
Is ESXi 8 still free in 2024?
Virtualization leader in the world, VMware's ESXi, will no longer be available for free for versions 7.x and 8.x, as announced by VMware on February 12, 2024. As a result, ESXi Server Free will no longer be usable in virtualization test environments.
vSphere 8.0 supports up to 8 vGPUs per VM – a 2x increase compared to vSphere 7 U3, allowing you to run more and more powerful virtual machines, and perform tasks faster. In addition, there are more new vSphere 8 features.
- vSphere Distributed Services Engine
- Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 2.0
- Lifecycle Management
- ...
So, do you need to upgrade to vSphere 8 from vSphere 7 immediately? It depends. But in order to avoid accidents, it is always essential to be prepared to upgrade to ESXi 8 and vCenter 8 in advance. Next, this article will provide 3 ways to upgrade to ESXi 8, and answer some common questions.
Preupgrade for vSphere 8
Before you initiate an upgrade to vSphere 8, there are some maintenance and management activities you should perform to your vSphere environment.
✓ Check compatibility: vSphere 8 does not support any components of version 6.5 or older. Therefore, you may first need to upgrade some components to the minimum version 6.7 and check for these incompatibilities before the upgrade continues.
✓ Health check: If an environment is not in a healthy state, errors can occur which might require a rollback.
✓ SSO Domain Topology reconfiguration: You can choose to automatically perform external Platform Services Controller convergence, or to manually perform converge or domain repointing tasks prior to upgrade.
✓ Remove vCenter HA: deactivating and removing vCenter HA simplifies the upgrade workflow and makes things easier to troubleshoot in the event the upgrade fails.
✓ Backup your environment: It is critical to back up your vSphere environment before upgrading, including ESXi VMs, ESXi and vCenter configurations, Platform Services Controller, distributed virtual switches, etc.
Batch Backup your ESXi VMs via AOMEI Cyber Backup
Before upgrading to ESXi 8, it's essential to create a backup for data protection. AOMEI Cyber Backup is an agentless VM backup software supports both paid and free versions of VMware ESXi. It also allows you to batch backup multiple VMware ESXi VMs, and centrally monitor data protection of all these VMs, freeing you out of the heavy and laborious administrative tasks. More »
How to upgrade vSphere 7 to 8
Before you upgrade ESXi 7 to ESXi 8, you should first check the ESXi requirement of ESXi 8 including hardware, Compatibility requirements etc. I will upgrade to ESXi 8 in the following 3 ways:
- Using the ISO
- Using vSphere Lifecycle Manager
- Using ESXCLI command
Note: If you upgrade hosts managed by vCenter Server, you must update vCenter Server before you upgrade the ESXi hosts. If you do not upgrade your environment in the correct order, you can lose data and lose access to servers.
Upgrade to ESXi 8 using the ISO
First, you should download ESXi 8.0 ISO image before upgrading ESXi 7 to 8.
1. Access to your VMware ESXi web client (ESXi 7.0), right-click Manage from the left inventory and select Enter maintenance mode.
2. You could mount the ISO in your remote console, configure the boot to boot from ISO and reboot your server.
The ESXi 8.0 boot begins, booting into the installer/upgrader. Then follow the menu and select the disk where ESXI is installed.
3. After the upgrading process completes successfully, the installer will ask you to remove installation media and then reboot.
Use vSphere Lifecycle Manager to upgrade ESXi 7 to 8
You can use vSphere Lifecycle Manager as part of vCenter Server for hosts managed at the cluster level by vCenter.
1. Launch vSphere Client and log in to the vCenter Server, then navigate to the properties for your vSphere cluster, click the Updates tab. Then click Image > Setup Image.
2. Select the ESXi 8.0 version from the drop-down list on the ESXi version. Click SAVE.
3. Confirm to continue finish image setup.
4. Check compliance at the cluster level. We need to Remediate the hosts. Here, I am clicking the Remediate All button.
5. The Review Remediation impact dialog will pop up. Click the Start Remediation button.
The hosts begin remediating. After a few minutes, you will see the ESXi host reboot and will boot into ESXi 8.0 after the upgrade process from vSphere Lifecycle Manager.
Use the command line to update ESXi 7 to 8
Next, we can upgrade our existing ESXi host using the command line. This is easily accomplished with only a couple of commands, including the following:
esxcli software profile update -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-8.0.0-20513097-standard
When you see "The update completed successfully”, you need to reboot ESXi host.
The process of upgrading to ESXi 8 is simple. For the most part, many will try doing this in lab environments as most will probably be holding off in their production environments. However, if you want to upgrade your ESXi host to 8.0 version, you must backup VMware ESXi in case of disaster.
Q&A: frequently asked questions about upgrading to vSphere 8
Summary
Upgrading your existing ESXi hosts to ESXi 8.0 is fairly straightforward and can be accomplished in various ways, including using the ISO, command line, and vSphere Lifecycle Manager. Hopefully, this quick tutorial on the processes involved with each method will help to quickly get your lab environment up to date, running the latest ESXi 8.0 release.
