After patching a cluster with a single there hosts are showing non-complainant although it is running the patched ESXi version

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Using vLCM to patch a cluster using the Single Image hosts are still showing non-compliant despite successfully patching ESXi
• Review of the Image compliance drift shows the following message
  
  • ESXi Components ESXi VM Tools are either missing or downgraded on the host. Appropriate action will be taken during remediation.
• Remediation fails to complete

Environment

ESXi 8.0

Cause

The symbolic link pointing /locker/packages/ on ESX is broken. The datastore where the symbolic link is pointing has either been removed or otherwise is broken. Additionally, checking the ESXi Advanced System Settings:

UserVars.ProductLockerLocation

it is correctly pointing to:

/locker/packages/vmtoolsRepo/

Resolution

1. Validate the state of the symbolic link of the /locker/packages/ by running the following command
   • ls -lahtr /locker/
     • We should see the var and packages directories
   • If /locker/packages/ is pointing to a datastore like packages -> /vmfs/volumes/<volume-ID>/packages and this does not exist, proceed to the next steps
2. Change directories to the /locker directory
   • cd /locker
3. Delete the old packages symlink
   • rm packages
4. Recreate the packages, vmtoolsRepro, and var directories
   • mkdir -p packages/vmtoolsRepo
   • mkdir -p packages/var
5. Re-run the remediation task on the vCenter for the hosts
6. Validate that VMware Tools is now installed
   • esxcli software vib list | grep -i tools
     • You should see the following
       • tools-light   <Expected VMware Tools Version>   VMware   VMwareCertified   <Release date of VMware Tools>   host