ESXi upgrade or installation failure: Host not compatible with the image. The bootbank partition on the host has a capacity of <size>, the image requires <size>

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

vLCM upgrade may fail with

Host not compatible with the image. The bootbank partition on the host has a capacity of <size>, the image requires <size>. Remove unnecessary components from the image.

When attempting to install components on an ESXi host via “esxcli software” command, it may fail with:

[InstallationError]
The pending transaction requires 524 MB free space, however the maximum supported size is 489 MB.

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x and 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the ESXi host’s bootbank does not have enough space to accommodate the components that are being installed.

Some ESXi images may include component(s) provided by third-party vendors that are relatively large.
This can result in insufficient space in the bootbank when installing or upgrading any component. This is more likely to happen on hosts with small bootbanks (ex. 500MB or less).

Resolution

To work around this issue, there are two approaches. Choose one of the following:

1. Select components from third-party vendors that are smaller.
   
   Some vendors have multiple component (or VIB) versions for a particular ESXi system.  
   You may be able to select one that is smaller in size. Selecting smaller component(s) may be sufficient to complete installation within the existing bootbank.
   
   
2. Enlarge bootbank with full ESXi install rather than upgrade.
   
   If all required components are larger than bootbank size, check the existing bootbank size with command “df -h”.

   If bootbank is 500 MB, you may be able to increase bootbank size by re-installing ESXi on the existing boot device.  
   As long as the boot device is larger than 10 GB and VMFS is not preserved, an ESXi re-install will re-partition the bootbanks larger than 500 MB.  
   
   Re-installing ESXi requires providing host name, password, and network configuration.
   
   Note that re-partitioning the bootbanks is destructive. Backup data from the boot device to another location if required.
   See, How to back up and restore ESXi host configuration
   
   After ESXi re-install, the bootbank should be large enough to install all components.