Upgrade I/O Filters in a Cluster

After you upgrade your ESXi hosts to version 7.0 and later, use installers provided by I/O filter vendors to upgrade I/O filters deployed in the ESXi host cluster.

When you upgrade an ESXi 6.x host that has custom I/O filter VIBs to version 7.0 and later, all supported custom VIBs are migrated. However, the legacy I/O filters cannot work on ESXi 7.0 and later. The filters generally include 32 bit CIM providers, while ESXi 7.0 and later requires 64 bit CIM applications. You need to upgrade the legacy filters to make them compatible.

An upgrade consists of uninstalling the old filter components and replacing them with the new filter components. To determine whether an installation is an upgrade, vCenter Server checks the names and versions of existing filters. If the existing filter names match the names of the new filters but have different versions, the installation is considered an upgrade.

Prerequisites

• Required privileges:Host.Config.Patch.
• Upgrade your hosts to ESXi 7.0 and later. If you use vSphere Lifecycle Manager for the upgrade, see the Managing Host and Cluster Lifecycle documentation.

Procedure

1. To upgrade the filter, run the vendor-provided installer.

   During the upgrade, a third party I/O filter installer automatically places the hosts into maintenance mode.

   The installer identifies any existing filter components and removes them before installing the new filter components.
2. Verify that the I/O filter components are properly upgraded in your ESXi hosts. Use one of the following methods:
   • Run the esxcli software vib list command.
   • View the I/O filters in the vSphere Client. See View I/O Filters and Storage Providers.

Results

After the upgrade, the system places the hosts back into operational mode.