Live ESXi server Nic replacement

[drhhct]

All - a little guidance please

I have many ESXi servers that to be able to upgrade from esxi 6.0 > 6.7 we need to change the physical network cards as not supported in esxi 6.7 - these are live running systems, so the plan is to

• Place into maintenance mode (all hosts move to others in cluster)
• Remove from live distributed switch cfg
• Remove from VC inventory
• Shutdown server
• Replace 2 x ethernet cards in the same physical pci bus slots
• Install new cards
• Boot esxi 6.0 server and expect that the cards will be found and esxI as it boots will load drivers for HCL compatible cards
• check the cards have been found and drivers loaded
• check network status using the esxi server console - cfg IP address etc etc (I assume this will all be lost when new hardware is installed?)
• Add server back into cluster
• Add server back into the distributed switch cfg
• Test

Please advise any additional steps that I might need to action or anything that I have missed

Thanks in advance

[Alex_Romeo]

Hi,

The steps seem correct to me, remember that before updating ESXi hosts to 6.7 you have to update the vCenter to the same version or higher.

ARomeo

[IRIX201110141]

WAAAAAAY to complicated and needs to much time.

1. Set Host into MM

2. Migrate one VMNIC back to a vSS and migrate the Management VMK to thats vSS. You can remove all other  Uplinks NICs from the vDS when you dont run iSCSI/NFS storage

3. Shutdown the Host and add/replace the NIC

4. PowerOn the Host and within DCUI assign the new VMNIC/same VMNIC ID to ESXi Management.  One NIC is enough at this step.

5. Assign the VMNICs as Uplinks to the vDS and migrate the VMK

6. Leave MM

There is no reason to remove the Host from the vDS, Cluster or even vCenter.

If you use a LAG/LACP than a lot more is needed but it depends on if you add or just replace a NIC or can re-use a existing 1G NIC for temporary MGMT.

Regards,
Joerg