Hello. First, I have to say I am no VMWare expert. I inherited a network running VMWare ESXI Hosts 2 years ago, and I have been making out pretty well in my own personal opinion. I installed VCenter with Update Manager and have been using it to manage 3 hosts. I have installed many patches and did an upgrade from version 5.5 to version 6 last year without a single issue.
This month I have been trying to get my 3 hosts upgraded from version 6 to 6.5. I upgraded my VCenter server without issue. Downloaded 6.5 from VMware created and attached the upgrade baseline to the hosts. It turns out one of my hosts is not compatible (something about the CPU), and another upgraded without any issue.
However, the third host has been nothing but problems! Here is a run down of events. I forget some of the details as this has been going on for the entire month. I am sorry if I am being a bit "wordy" I just want to provide the entire picture...
-The original scan of the problematic host showed the 6.5 upgrade as "Incompatible" due to a conflicting "VIB". So, I followed articles to figure out which one it was and used the SSH console to remove the VIB (Unfortunately I don't remember what the problem VIB was).
-After a re-boot and another scan the status of the upgrade changed to "Non-Compliant". So I scheduled the upgrade to install again overnight.
-That night during the upgrade I remoted into my servers iDRAC controller to check the progress. I found the server stuck waiting for a response to 2 messages. The first message was... "An unexpected error occurred: See Log for Details. AttributeError: "NoneType" object has no attribute "AddVIBS". I hit enter and after a few minutes another message showed stating... "An error has occurred while parsing the installation script. Error:file:/ks.cfg:line 3: upgrade specified, but ESXI of version 5.5 or greater was not found on disk xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx." (The message went on into another paragraph). I re-started the host and fortunately it came back up without issue.
-The next day I started trying to determine what caused the error. After looking for days I was unable to pinpoint the cause. Until, in the VCener server Web Client I accidentally came across the summary page for the host, and found that under "configuration" next to "Image Profile" it said "Unknown". I researched the error and found articles saying to copy files from a working host of the same version to the problem host. It took me some time, but I eventually found the correct series of commands and completed the copy. I re-booted the server and the "Image Profile" now showed as "(Updated) ESXI 6.0.0-2016030 2001-Standard".
-I scheduled the upgrade to run overnight again. The next morning I found the upgrade did not complete. I looked through pages and pages of log files and found multi[ple errors. But the error that I think is most pertinent is the error... " 'HostUpgradeScanner' 1944 INFO] [scannerImpl, 675] Precheck script test result: 'ERROR', test 'PACKAGE_COMPLIANCE', expected 'BCM_bootbank.........." . The error goes on for pages listing what I believe are drivers and their versions.
-I thought it may be due to using the wrong upgrade ISO. So, I went to Dell's website and download the DELL customized 6.5 ISO specific for my server (a PowerEgde R730). But, I got all the same results using that ISO.
I do not want to go any further down this rabbit hole without trying to get some direction from more experienced ESXI users. So, I am asking if anyone may be able to please help me resolve this issue?