"Failed to find an eligible temporary bootbank" while upgrading ESXI host from 6.7.0 to 7.0.3.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

During the upgrade process from ESXi 6.7.0 to ESXi 7.0.3, several errors were encountered.

• From the ILO:
  
  
  
• From the Lifecycle Manager:
  
  
  
• From the command line: 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Cause

The creation of the OS Data VMFS datastore was hindered by the presence of a local datastore on the boot device. This resulted in the failure to create the temporary bootbank directory.

Resolution

• The faulty ESXi hosts were unable to create the temporary bootbank directory due to a conflict with the local datastore (VMFS 0). The local datastore, residing on the boot device, occupied the partition space, preventing the creation of the necessary OS Data VMFS datastore.
  
  
  
  
• Remove Local Datastore:
  • Delete the local datastore (VMFS 0) from the faulty ESXi hosts.
• Offline Bundle Preparation:
  • Upload the offline bundle to a shared datastore.
• Host Access and Image Profile Identification:
  • Login to the host via a Putty session.
  • Navigate to the datastore location containing the offline bundle.
  • Execute ls -lha to list files in the directory.
  • Run esxcli software sources profile list -d "path pointing to the offline bundle .zip file" to identify the image profile name (e.g., "Cisco--UCS-Addon-ESXi").
• Run Update Command:
  • Execute esxcli software profile update -p "image profile name" -d "path pointing to the offline bundle" -f --no-hardware-warning to initiate the upgrade.
• Verify VMFS Removal:
  • After the update completes successfully, confirm the removal of the local datastore.
• Reboot Host:
  • Reboot the host using reboot -f.
• Confirm Success:
  • Verify the successful completion of the upgrade.