I’m dangerous with my knowledge of VMware ESXi. I know enough to keep it running but am a novice when it comes to maintaining and upgrading. Upgrading a Dell PowerEdge T640 from 7 U2 to U3 was a success and I patted myself on the back for not blowing up my server in the process. Until I got to the end and needed to add the Dell/EMC vendor add on. The VIBs come in the form of a .zip file.
I only lost 1 hour and 59 minutes of my time on earth with trial and error to figure out the proper path to supply. The command I thought I needed was:
esxcli software vib install -d "/vmfs/volumes/LongNumber/apps/esx/DellDrivers/DellEMC_Addon_7.0.3_A00.zip" This path was based on me looking at the NFS Datastores in the ESXi GUI, which I have as follows:
By clicking on the Apps datastore I was able to find the Location for this NFS share.
What I failed to understand is that as far as ESXCLI is concerned the Apps datastore is
/vmfs/volumes/LongNumber/
not
/vmfs/volumes/LongNumber/apps/
So the command I actually needed to use is:
esxcli software vib install -d "/vmfs/volumes/LongNumber/esx/DellDrivers/DellEMC_Addon_7.0.3_A00.zip" And then all was well with the world.
Next up – migrating OSData from internal SD Cards to SSD in prep for ESX 8….