VxRail: How to Manually Update vSAN Witness Appliance Using CLI

Summary: This is the command-line process to conduct an in-place update of the vSAN witness in a VxRail environment.

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Instructions

Procedure:

  1. Download the VxRail upgrade Composite Bundle that matches the upgrade VxRail code. Extract the ESXi update depot.zip from the VxRail update composite bundles folder.

Example:

example of download bundle

  1. Upload the ESXi update depot.zip from upgrade composite bundle to /scratch of witness using SFTP.
  2. Place the Witness into Maintenance Mode.
  3. SSH to the Witness appliance
  4. Get available Profiles on uploaded .depot.zip with the command:
esxcli software sources profile list --depot='path/to/esxi/.zip'

Example:

esxcli software sources profile list --depot=/vmfs/volumes/61f8cb7a-94b3a685-a859-005056810acd/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-depot.zip
Name                           Vendor        Acceptance Level  Creation Time        Modification Time
-----------------------------  ------------  ----------------  -------------------  -----------------
ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-standard  VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported  2022-09-01T00:00:00  2022-09-01T00:00:00
ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-no-tools  VMware, Inc.  PartnerSupported  2022-09-01T00:00:00  2022-08-23T03:00:16
  1. The no-tools profile is required as it takes less space, and VMtools is not required on a witness appliance as it cannot run VMs.
  2. Run command:
esxcli software profile update -p 'name of image profile' --depot='path/to/esxi/.zip'

Example:

esxcli software profile update -p ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-no-tools --depot=/vmfs/volumes/61f8cb7a-94b3a685-a859-005056810acd/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-depot.zip
Update Result
   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
   Reboot Required: true

 

Important Note:
  • Reboot the witness.
  • Remove the uploaded upgrade depot.zip from the /scratch partition.
rm path/to/esxi/.zip

Example:

rm /vmfs/volumes/61f8cb7a-94b3a685-a859-005056810acd/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-depot.zip
rm: remove '/vmfs/volumes/61f8cb7a-94b3a685-a859-005056810acd/VMware-ESXi-7.0U3g-20328353-depot.zip'? y

(note scratch is a symlink to a UUID, your scratch partition UUID is different from the example)
  • After the witness has booted back into maintenance mode, check that the witness ESXi build reflects the wanted updated ESXi build version. Check that the build is the same as the VxRail hosts, or to the ESXi version of the VxRail upgrade code.

Affected Products

VxRail Appliance Series

Products

VxRail Appliance Family
Article Properties
Article Number: 000204022
Article Type: How To
Last Modified: 13 May 2025
Version:  5
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