Remove VIBs from a Host

You can uninstall third-party VIBs or VMware VIBs from your ESXi host.

VMware partners prepare third-party VIBs to provide management agents or asynchronously released drivers.

Install vCLI or deploy the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) virtual machine. See Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces. For troubleshooting, run esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell.

Prerequisites

• If the removal requires a reboot, and if the host belongs to a VMware HA cluster, disable HA for the host.

• Determine whether the update requires the host to be in maintenance mode or to be rebooted. If necessary, place the host in maintenance mode.

  See Determine Whether an Update Requires the Host to Be in Maintenance Mode or to Be Rebooted. See Place a Host in Maintenance Mode.

• Install vCLI or deploy the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) virtual machine. See Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces. For troubleshooting, run esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell.

Procedure

1. Power off each virtual machine running on the ESXi host.

   Option	Command
   To shut down the guest operating system and then power off the virtual machine	vmware-cmd --server=server_name path_to_vm stop soft
   To force the power off operation	vmware-cmd --server=server_name path_to_vm stop hard

   Alternatively, to avoid powering off virtual machines, you can migrate them to another host. See the topic Migrating Virtual Machines in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation.

2. Place the host in maintenance mode.
   vicfg-hostops --server=server_name --operation enter
3. If necessary, shut down or migrate virtual machines.
4. Determine which VIBs are installed on the host.
   esxcli --server=server_name software vib list
5. Remove the VIB.
   esxcli --server=server_name software vib remove --vibname=name

   Specify one or more VIBs to remove in one of the following forms:

   • name
   • name:version
   • vendor:name
   • vendor:name:version

   For example, the command to remove a VIB specified by vendor, name and version would take this form:

   esxcli –-server myEsxiHost software vib remove --vibname=PatchVendor:patch42:version3

   Note: The remove command supports several more options. See the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference.