ESXi Host update via Auto Deploy fails to boot to the target version

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• When attempting to update an ESXi host via vSphere Auto Deploy, the process fails to successfully apply the new image profile.
• The ESXi host shutdown operation goes into a hung state.
• The ESXi host reboot operation succeeds but loads the existing ESXi version instead of the target version.

Cause

The ESXi host maybe retaining cached boot configuration data from a prior state. This persistent cache interferes with the standard boot sequence, leading to the configured Auto Deploy rule being bypassed. Consequently, the host is prevented from retrieving and applying the correct new image profile that is associated with the active rule.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, perform a cold reboot of the affected ESXi host via the host IPMI (Ex: Dell iDRAC, HP iLO, Cisco KVM etc) to clear the host cache in order to allow the new Auto Deploy rule to take effect.