ESXi Image update through SDDC UI fails with "An internal error occurred while staging/remediating the host"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Lifecycle manager image update on ESXi host through SDDC may fail with below errors: 

       

• Custom components have been applied to image currently in use 
• When reviewing the cluster vLCM state in vCenter UI we see it shows the image is incompatible 

Environment

SDDC Manager 5.2.x

vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

Latest image contains older version of components/vibs which were customized on the current image applied on the ESXi hosts and this causes update failure as we cannot downgrade to older versions

Resolution

Review following article which outlines steps to identify custom components causing the issue and how to remediate:  https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/440252/downgrades-of-manually-added-components.html

Once completed, validate the  image and proceed with update of ESXi from SDDC 

Additional Information

Error: "Downgrades of host VIBs <name>(<version>) in the image are not supported" when attempting to update ESXi hosts with vLCM