Quick Tip: Install a VIB into an Existing vSphere 5.5 ESXi Host

The following will likely work in other versions of vSphere, but I used it in vSphere 5.5 a while ago, then forgot to hit publish on this post!

In that case I had installed a new ESXi host and not included the custom VIB with the drivers for the SATA card. I did this deliberately as I thought I would have no need at this time to use the local HBA. The thing I forgot is that the host profiles I had created from other hosts included a local HBA, therefore the host profiles would not remediate without one. Annoying! So I used the following steps to manually add the specific VIB I needed (in this case sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.vib).

SSH to your ESXi host (having enabled the SSH server from the vSphere Client):

# ssh root@<hostip>
# cd /tmp

 

Copy the vib file into the host image (in my case I had it stored on my web server, but you could equally use any other standard method to get the file onto the host):

# wget http://www.tekhead.org/wp-uploads/www.tekhead.org/sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.zip

 

Unzip the vib file:

# unzip sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.zip

 

Install the vib:

# esxcli software vib install -v file:/tmp/sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.vib
 
Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: VFrontDe_bootbank_sata-xahci_1.10-1
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:

 

Check that the vib is installed:

# esxcli software vib list | grep -i <vib name in my case ahci>
sata-xahci   1.10-1   VFrontDe   CommunitySupported   2014-10-31

 

Remove the old files (no longer needed):

# rm sata-xahci-1.10-1.x86_64.*

 

Finally, reboot your ESXi host, job done!

 

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