Hyperflex ESXi - VMware Tools Upgrade Issue

[matthew-blackwood]

We've got the latest supported release of VMware ESXi from Cisco Hyperflex which is 7.0.3 for the M5 models and it appears the currently shipped tools version for VMware is 12.3 which is now vulnerable and we need to update it ASAP

The offline tools bundle wont install via the Hyperflex Upgrade in Hyperflex Connect as its not a full ESXi upgrade ZIP so my question is can we deploy it using Lifecycle manager and remediate the hosts or will this cause issues with Hyperflex further down the line if it doesn't realise the version of the VMware Tools has changes and doesn't match the versions it installed during the last ESXi upgrade.

Any assistance here would be really great!

[Kirk J]

The HX storage controllers are not configured to allow the ESXi host or end user to update code (i.e. VMware tools package).

Since you are going to manually remediate the addon  update to the hosts, make sure you are not changing the U /release level.  See https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/hyperconverged_systems/HyperFlex_HX_DataPlatformSoftware/b_ESXi_HXDP_Compatibiltiy_Guidelines.html

The hyperflex storage controllers won't care if the ESXi hosts have different tools level.

It is critical that you only put one host at a time into HX maintenance mode, and don't allow your patching to automatically reboot the hosts as it will not have any knowledge of the HX cluster health.

Manually reboot/remediate the hosts (one at a time) after confirming the HX cluster health is healthy.