ESXI Host update on BE7000 fails

[Michael Freisinger]

Dear Community,

We have two BE7000 running VMware ESXi 7.0.1 build-16850804 as factory default and trying upgaded to VMware-vSphere ESXi-7.0 U3f Build 20036589 with no success.  The error below is encounted on two identical BE7000 servers:

[InstallationError]
Failed to finish bootbank stage: ('/tmp/stagebootbank/imgdb.tgz', 'Error writing tar database: Should have base image when an addon exists.')
cause = ('/tmp/stagebootbank/imgdb.tgz', 'Error writing tar database: Should have base image when an addon exists.')
Please refer to the log file for more details.

Have had success upgrading 7 other BE7000 running VMware ESXi 6.7.0 build-14320388 as factory default.  VMware support engaged with no outcome in two weeks.  The following VMware KB article points to the exact problem.  My assumption is that the BE7000's are built by Cisco with an AutoDeploy package.  Wondering if anyone else has seen.

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/87751

[b.winter]

Have you used the Cisco custom image from VM or any image?

[Michael Freisinger]

Have used multiple differnt VMware ESXi image.  There is no customer Cisco image for ESXi 7.0 U3f  This same image has been sucesfull on 7 diffrent BE7000's, the only differnce is the version ESXi that was orignally loaded by Cisco.

[b.winter]

Then in my opinion, that is your problem, because you used the "normal" ESXi image.

TAC once told me (because I also had used the "normal" image, and had problems after the upgrade), that only the Cisco custom image can be used for the upgrade.
So in your case, you have to get the latest ESXi 7 Custom image and use this for the upgrade.