On a vSphere Distributed Service Engine hosts configured with Nvidia BF2 DPU and DPU running BF2 NIC Firmware version greater than 24.33.1246. ( e.g. 24.36.7506), during 8.0 Update 2 upgrade, ESXi rollback can fail and the host configuration cannot be recovered in the event of an upgrade failure.
Note: These instructions do not apply to hosts where fresh install of vSphere 8.0U2 is being performed.
In vSphere 8.0u2, networking driver for Nvidia BF2 DPU has been enhanced to improve reliability of communication channel between the ESXi on the x86 host and the DPU. This change requires specific firmware version and driver compatibility. In an event of upgrade failure, during the rollback process, ESXi on x86 is expected to rollback to previous version of ESXi first, after which rollback of "ESXi on DPU" will be initiated and completed. Rollback implementation relies on availability of communication channel to update the boot bank of "ESXi on DPU"(to rollback ESXi on DPU).
When BF2 DPU running firmware version > 24.33.1246 ( e.g. 24.36.7506), during the rollback mechanism, ESXi on x86 will rollback to prior ESXi version (e.g., 8.0U1), while "ESXi on DPU" is still running 8.0U2 (yet to be rolled back). In this state, communication channel uplink on 8.0U1 ESXi on the x86 is unable to establish communication with 8.0U2 "ESXi on DPU" due to certain limitations of newer firmware version ( > 24.33.1246) operating with two different driver versions. This communication channel connection failure will cause the rollback to fail.
For ESXi 8.0 update 2 upgrade on vSphere Distributed Service Engine hosts configured with Nvidia BF2 DPUs , it is recommended to perform ESXi upgrade with Nvidia BF2 DPU running NIC firmware version less than or equal to 24.33.1246 and ARM (UEFI & ATF) firmware version 18.2.0.12580.
Please follow the below mentioned ESXi and DPU firmware upgrade order in the same maintenance window:
Note: For fresh install of ESXi 8.0U2 (or newer) on host with DPU, it is required to update BF2 DPU firmware prior to ESXi install.