Upgrading ESXi 5

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halcy

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Dec 10, 2023
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I've had a home box frozen in time on ESXi 5 for many years now, I'd like to try and upgrade it to ESXi 8 if possible. It's an E3-1230 v2 with 16GB DDR3 ECC, 4 onboard Intel 82574L gigabit nics, and PCI pass through of an m1015 for NAS. I recall years ago VMware had made some decision when sunsetting vSphere client that the web interface replacement couldn't manage some of the things that were needed to really use ESXi standalone without vCenter.. did that get resolved? Any other considerations I should know about before attempting this?

Thanks!
 
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halcy

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Dec 10, 2023
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BoredSysadmin said:
Sorry for being the bearer of bad news, but from ESXi 7, VMWare kept increasing hardware requirements and sunsetting old hardware.
Most likely, the newest version you could install is ESXi6.7. You can easily install 6.7 from file using cli:
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I accept bad news, thanks for the info! Any limitations of managing 6.7 differently from 5.0 that I need to worry about?
 
BoredSysadmin

BoredSysadmin

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Mar 2, 2019
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halcy said:
I accept bad news, thanks for the info! Any limitations of managing 6.7 differently from 5.0 that I need to worry about?
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Not that I can think of on top of my head. I recommend you checking VMWare hardware requirements and compatibility tables yourself, I all can provide are educated guesses. Both Windows client and flash-based ESXI mgmt interface are long gone, but html5 was eventually built to be just as good.
Actually official VMWare compatibility only lists 6.5u3 for last supported version for E3-1200-v2, but I'm pretty sure that 6.7 should work as well.
 
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oneplane

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Jul 23, 2021
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Just upgrade to Proxmox and get some more life out of your hardware :cool: (only half joking here)
 
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zachj

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Apr 17, 2019
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In my opinion you should upgrade the components required (if any) in order to run at least 6.7 u3. 5.0 is going to be a teenager next year :cool: There are a lot of vulnerabilities never patched.

I guess it depends on what you’re doing but I think 6.7 is the floor for where I’d be happy. The host client in esxi 8 got a facelift and looks a little prettier but nothing to be excited about and speaking as a former employee I think it’s clear for all to see they stopped innovating in the 6.x era; 7.0 was full of shit nobody wanted and customers refused to upgrade to the point that VMware extended the lifecycle for 6.7 by 2 whole years.
 
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halcy

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Dec 10, 2023
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zachj said:
In my opinion you should upgrade the components required (if any) in order to run at least 6.7 u3. 5.0 is going to be a teenager next year :cool: There are a lot of vulnerabilities never patched.

I guess it depends on what you’re doing but I think 6.7 is the floor for where I’d be happy. The host client in esxi 8 got a facelift and looks a little prettier but nothing to be excited about and speaking as a former employee I think it’s clear for all to see they stopped innovating in the 6.x era; 7.0 was full of shit nobody wanted and customers refused to upgrade to the point that VMware extended the lifecycle for 6.7 by 2 whole years.
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Completely agree on the patched vulnerabilities, that is the primary motivation, because otherwise it clearly continues to work fine :)
 
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zachj

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Apr 17, 2019
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If all you’re doing is running vms and passing through an HBA you’re not going to be wowed by an upgrade.

GE used to tell me they stopped caring about anything after 6.0. About the only compelling reason to upgrade to 6.7 for a lot of people was replacing flash with html5 in vcenter (which frankly didn’t require an esxi upgrade). Especially after all the browser makers removed flash support and adobe time-bombed flash I think most companies got with the program and moved to at least 6.7 u3.

honestly I’d say you should upgrade to 8 just because I think stay-current is important. Your cpu can be made to work with install flags. Replacing your nic and hba is cheap.
 
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zachj

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Apr 17, 2019
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Aside: part of what kept everyone from upgrading to 7.0 was intel failing to innovate (meaning people were still running hundreds of thousands of ivy bridge servers) and then covid happened, which created supply chain issues.

nobody wanted to move to skylake/cascade lake because there weren’t meaningful performance improvements, because intel was already saying ice lake was essentially obsolete before it shipped (so nobody wanted to invest in that platform) and because you could still get 3rd party warranties on ivy bridge servers.

VMware certainly failed to innovate enough to create organic demand for vsphere 7–the primary incentive to upgrade was simply VMware dropping support for 6.x—but the situation was definitely made worse by intel and covid.
 
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halcy

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Dec 10, 2023
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Any particular suggestions on HBA (for FreeNAS) and NICs? I'd prefer to get a multigig 4 port NIC if any have support.
 
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zachj

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Apr 17, 2019
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I can’t comment on HBA but a NIC would be intel x540 or newer if you want 10gig. They’re dirt cheap but run pretty warm.

an intel i350 works fine for 4-port 1gig on ESXi 8.
 
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halcy

New Member
Dec 10, 2023
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For anyone that happens upon this thread later, it was a straightforward upgrade process with USB boot ISOs from 5->6->6.7->7. Since my HBA is pass through to the guest OS it didn't matter that ESXi didn't support it. Looks like I've got about a year and a half now to upgrade and get onto 8 before 7 goes end of support.
 
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