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Upgrading only an ESXi host beneath VMware vCloud Director 1.5.x / 5.1.x (2045239)

Purpose

This article provides information on upgrading your ESXi hosts, but not your VMware vCloud Director.

Resolution

To upgrade the underlying ESXi hosts without causing a full outage:
  1. Log in to vCloud Director as Administrator. 
  2. In the Manage & Monitor tab, click Hosts.
  3. Right-click the first host you want to upgrade and disable it. This prevents new virtual machines from being created on this host.

    Note: The active virtual machines will not be affected.

     
  4. Right-click the host and redeploy all virtual machines. This migrates all virtual machines off of the host provided your vSphere environment is properly configured for DRs/vMotion. 
  5. Confirm that no virtual machines are running on your ESXi host. Put it in Maintenance Mode.
  6. Perform the upgrade. 
  7. After your host is upgraded and is no longer running in Maintenance Mode, go to the Manage & Monitor tab in vCloud Director and click Hosts. 
  8. Right-click the disabled host and enable to bring it back online.

To resolve this issue for all remaining hosts, repeat steps 2 to 8. 

Impact/Risks

Running these steps in an active vCloud Director environment can lead to performance problems, as you are migrating any active virtual machines from one host to another.  Users may experience a pause in access related to the vMotion of machines during step 4.  If there are any problems with your configuration or infrastructure related to DRS/ vMotion, additional problems may occur. To be caution, always schedule downtime or outage windows before attempting upgrades.

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