"An error occurred during host configuration: /usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 99." is encountered while Scanning or Patching ESXi using LCM.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• When trying to patch the ESXi host using baselines/ LCM, it fails with error "An error occurred during host configuration: /usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 99.".
• When using the CLI method of update, the patch installs successfully on the host without any issues.
• From the /var/run/log/esxupdate.log, it is observed that the VUM baseline scan/patching fails due to the baseline on host is conflicting with the baseimage in depot in schemaVersion field.
  
  [YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS] Er(11) esxupdate[275225]: esximage.Errors.ReleaseUnitConflictError: ('ESXi:8.0.3-0.35.24280767', 'baseimage', "Two baseimages share the same releaseID: ESXi:8.0.3-0.35.24280767, but have different attributes: schemaVersion ('1.0' != '1.1')")

Cause

Using an older version PowerCLI(where schemaVersion hardcodes to 1.0) to customize 8.0.3 baseimage (where schemaVersion is 1.1) to install the host, will result in conflicting metadata with the online depot version when scan is in progress.

Resolution

To resolve the issue: 

Please use the latest PowerCLI version and re-image or patch the host to a correct base image.

As a workaround, you can Update the ESXi host using cli method.