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 ESXCLI. See Getting Started with ESXCLI. For troubleshooting, run esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell.

Prerequisites

  • If the removal requires a reboot, and if the host belongs to a vSphere HA cluster, deactivate 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 See if ESXi Host Update Requires Maintenance Mode or Reboot. See Place a Host in Maintenance Mode.
    Important: To ensure that the boot disk is not actively in use when you use ESXCLI to update or upgrade the host, put the host manually in maintenance mode.

  • Install ESXCLI. See Getting Started with ESXCLI. For troubleshooting, run esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell.

Procedure

  1. Power off each virtual machine running on the ESXi host.
    Note: You can list all running virtual machines and retrieve the World ID of each one by running the following command. 
    esxcli --server=<server_name> vm process list
    Option Command
    To shut down the guest operating system and then power off the virtual machine 
    esxcli --server=<server_name> vm process kill --type soft --world-id <vm_ID>
    To power off the virtual machine immediately 
    esxcli --server=<server_name> vm process kill --type hard --world-id <vm_ID>
    To force the power off operation 
    esxcli --server=<server_name> vm process kill --type force --world-id <vm_ID>

    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. 
    esxcli --server=<server_name> system maintenanceMode set --enable true
  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 can take the following form.

    esxcli –-server myEsxiHost software vib remove --vibname=PatchVendor:patch42:version3
    Note: The remove command supports several more options. See the ESXCLI Reference.