Patch a VMware ESXI host with the ESXCLI command and choose the right image profile
When installing a patch on a VMware ESXi host using the ESXCLI command you need to specify the image profile that is available in the ESXi patch.
Here are the steps for patching a VMware ESXi host with the correct image profile:
- Go to the Customer Connect Patch Downloads page.
- Download the patch needed, In this example, I use ESXi patch VMware-ESXi-7.0U3o-22348816-depot.zip
- Upload the patch to a datastore
- Make a SSH connection to the ESXi host
- Place the host in maintenance mode
esxcli system maintenanceMode set –enable-true
- Now you need to know which image profiles are available in the VMware ESXi patch. To do this use the following command (replace the
with your datastore):
esxcli software sources profile list -d /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/iso/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3q-22348816-depot.zip
- The following profiles are listed. As you can see the image profile contains 4 image profiles:
- Here is a table with so, 0, standard, and no-tools means:
| Option | Details |
|---|---|
| standard | With VMware Tools included |
| no-tools | Without VMware Tools |
| sq | Security updates only image |
| q | Security and Bugfix update image |
- To install the ESXi with security and bugfix updates without VMware Tools use the following command (replace the
with your datastore):
esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3o-22348816-depot.zip -p ESXi-7.0U3o-22348816-no-tools
- Reboot the host
esxcli system shutdown reboot -r "Patch ESXi 7.0U3"
- When the host is back, exit maintenance mode, make a SSH connection to the ESXi host
esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false
With this procedure, you can specify the right image profile when manually patching an ESXi host.