When you upgrade an ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 host to ESXi 8.0, all supported custom VIBs remain intact on the host after the upgrade, regardless of whether the VIBs are included in the installer ISO.

When you perform a compliance check, the target host is scanned against a set of VIBs from the upgrade image. If you check the compliance of a host against an upgrade baseline that contains an ISO image of the same version as the target host, vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays Compliant or Non-compliant compliance status. If the upgrade image is the basic one distributed by VMware, or is a custom ISO image that contains the same set of VIBs as the ones already installed on the target host, the scan result is Compliant. If the upgrade ISO contains VIBs that are of different kind or version than the VIBs that are already on the target host, the scan result is Non-compliant.

The remediation process of an ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 host against an ESXi 8.0 image is an upgrade process.

Note: Upgrading to ESXi 8.0 requires a boot device that is a minimum of 4 GB. When booting from a local disk, SAN or iSCSI LUN, up to 128 GB of disk space is used to create ESXi system partitions. You can create a VMFS datastore on a boot disk larger than 128 GB.

You can use an ISO 8.0 image in an upgrade operation of an ESXi 8.0 host. The remediation process of ESXi 8.0 host by using ESXi 8.0 image with additional VIBs is equivalent to a patching process. Because the upgrade image is of the same version as the target host, upon completing the upgrade operation, the additional VIBs are added to the target host.

Table 1. Scan and Remediation Situations for ESXi 6.7 and ESXi 7.0 Hosts Against ESXi 8.0 Images
Action Description
Compliance check and remediation of ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 hosts against an ESXi 8.0 image that contains additional non-conflicting and non-obsoleting VIBs with the target host. vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays a Non-Compliant compliance status for the host. Remediation succeeds. All VIBs on the target host before remediation remain on the host. All VIBs from the upgrade image that are not present on the target host before remediation are added to the host.
Compliance check and remediation of ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 hosts against an ESXi 8.0 image that contains VIBs of a version later than the version of the same VIBs on the target host. vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays a Non-Compliant compliance status for the host. Remediation succeeds. VIBs on the target host are updated to the later version.
Compliance check and remediation of ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 hosts against an ESXi 8.0 image that contains conflicting VIBs with the target host. vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays an Incompatible compliance status for the host. Remediation fails. The host remains intact.
Scan and remediation of ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 hosts against an ESXi 8.0 image that contains vendor-tagged VIBs.
  • If the vendor-tagged VIBs do not match the host hardware, vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays an Incompatible compliance status for the host. Remediation fails.
  • If the vendor-tagged VIBs match the host hardware, vSphere Lifecycle Manager displays a Non-Compliant compliance status for the host and remediation succeeds.
Scan and remediation of ESXi 6.7 or ESXi 7.0 hosts against an ESXi 8.0 image that contains VIBs that obsolete the VIBs installed on the host. Remediation succeeds. All VIBs that have been installed on the target host before remediation are replaced by the newer VIBs from the ESXi image.