ESX 8.0U3j back in time upgrade?

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• vLCM (vCenter) shows an ESX upgrade path is not supported.

  The following hosts xxxx have unsupported upgrade paths. The base image currently running on the hosts is of version 8.0.3-3.100.25429389 and the target base image version is 9.1.0.0200.25557999.

   

Environment

ESX 8.x

Cause

When an express patch is released from a base, EPs inherits the limitation (back-in-time) of its base release.

• Upgrading VMware ESX from source version 8.0U3j to target version 9.1.0.x is not supported, as the target version is an express patch on top of 9.1.0.0
• Upgrading VMware ESX from source version 8.0U3j to target version 9.1.0.0 is not supported, as the source version's release date (2026-05-27) is after the target version's release date (2026-05-12), making it a newer release.

Resolution

Monitor the upgrade paths matrix for a supported upgrade path.