Understanding ESXi Quick Boot Compatibility

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Quick Boot is a vSphere feature that speeds up the upgrade process of an ESXi server.  A regular reboot involves a full power cycle that requires firmware and device initialization. Quick Boot optimizes the reboot path to avoid this, saving considerable time from the upgrade process.
• Not all servers or configurations support the Quick Boot feature. The Quick Boot support depends on the requirements described below. Quick Boot features are only available in the Lifecycle Manager / Update Manager UI if the system is supported.
• The Quick Boot feature includes some prechecks functionality to prevent the usage on an unsupported configuration. If any of these precheck are not met, a regular reboot is performed.
• Hardware vendor can define additional requirements, not validated by the prechecks.
• Only enable Quick Boot in the Update Manager UI if the below considerations are met.
  
  • Host platform should be supported, see Additional Information.
  • All device drivers should be supported, see Additional Information.
• Our precheck functionality contains individual checks for the platform and drivers. An OEM may define additional restriction in the documentation, not covered by the pre-checks.
  
  

• Additional constraints for 8.0 and earlier versions.

  • System does not have any Persistent Memory installed.
  • TPM is disabled.
    
    

• Additional constraints for 8.0 U1 and newer versions

  • Intel TXT is disabled.

Notes:

• While performing an upgrade where the source builds are ESXi 8.0 U1 (and any patches on that line) or ESXi 8.0 U2 (and any patches on that line), users may experience a PSOD during early boot with error message: "Unable to restore system configuration. A security violation was detected. https://via.vmw.com/security-violation"
  The workaround is to reboot the host; the system upgrades successfully. Refer to: ESXi boot failures due to system configuration issues - restore security configuration, decrypt system configuration, recover system configuration.
• When using vSphere ESXi 7.0 U2 or later, disabling the TPM after it was previously enabled may fail system boot, see Boot time failures due to ESXi configuration encryption.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Resolution

Follow the steps below to check the Quick Boot compatibility of ESXi host:

1. Login to ESXi host via SSH
2. Run the below script:

/usr/lib/vmware/loadesx/bin/loadESXCheckCompat.py
   
   Sample script execution result:
   
[root@hostname:~] /usr/lib/vmware/loadesx/bin/loadESXCheckCompat.py
This system is compatible with Quick Boot.
   
   Notes:
   1. This script will list all issues preventing Quick Boot from being available on the ESXi host.
   2. Quick Boot feature is not supported on Distributed Services Engine support Server configurations installed with DPUs.
   3. For ESXi 7.0, if the script returns errors related to host compatibility, check the hardware vendor documentation about additional restrictions.

Additional Information

• For ESXi 7.0 or newer versions, to check the hardware compatibility see:
  • Quick Boot on Dell EMC
  • Quick Boot on HPE
  • Quick Boot on Cisco
  • Quick Boot on Fujitsu/Fsas Technologies
  • Quick Boot on Lenovo
• If the host platform is not compatible with Quick Boot, see:
  • Quick Boot on Dell EMC
  • Quick Boot on HPE