Symptom

After installing ESXi 6.7u3 or 7.0u2 on a system with a ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapter, and users attempt to upgrade to 7.0u3, one of the following two scenarios occurs.

Scenario #1 - The existing ESXi OS is installed on a physical or logical drive attached to a ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapter:
The ESXi 7.0u3 installer does not find the physical or logical drive to upgrade since the Microchip smartpqi driver on the 7.0u3 installation media does not support ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapters.

Scenario #2 - The existing ESXi OS is installed on a target other than a drive attached to a ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapter:
The ESXi 7.0u3 installer can upgrade from ESXi 7.0u2 to 7.0u3; however access to physical or logical drives attached to a ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapter is lost.

Affected Configurations

The system may be any of the following Lenovo servers:

• ThinkSystem SR630 V2, Type 7Z70/7Z71, any model
• ThinkSystem SR650 V2, Type 7Z72/7Z73, any model

The system is configured with at least one of the following:

• ESXi 7.0, any N/A

The system is configured with one or more of the following Lenovo Options:

• ThinkSystem 4350-16i SAS/SATA 12Gb HBA, Option SR17A85786, 03GX081
• ThinkSystem 4350-8i SAS/SATA 12Gb HBA, Option SR17A85785 03GX080
• ThinkSystem RAID 5350-8i PCIe 12Gb Adapter, Option SR17A85787, FRU Part Number 03GX082 03GX082
• ThinkSystem RAID 9350-16i 4GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter, Option SR17A85790, 03GX085
• ThinkSystem RAID 9350-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter, Option SR17A85788, 03GX083

The smartpqi device driver for the ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapters is affected.

The system has the symptom described above.

Note: This does not imply that the network operating system will work under all combinations of hardware and software.

Please see the compatibility page for more information: http://www.lenovo.com/us/en/serverproven/

Solution

This behavior is corrected with Lenovo ESXi 7.0u3 Custom Image VMware-ESXi-7.0.3c-19193900-LNV-20220119.iso, which includes the Microchip-smartpqi driver.

The file is or will be available by selecting the appropriate Product Group, type of System, Product name, Product machine type, and Operating system on Lenovo Support web page, at the following URL:

http://datacentersupport.lenovo.com/

Workaround

The workaround for Scenario #2 above is to overwrite the Microchip smartpqi driver in 7.0u3 which does not support ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapters with the Microchip smartpqi driver 70.4060.0.115 which does support ThinkSystem 4350-5350-9350 Series Adapters. Use the VMware ESX 7.0 Component Installation Instructions below.

VMware ESX 7.0 Component Installation Instructions
VMware uses a file package called a Component as the mechanism for installing or upgrading software packages on an ESX server.

The file may be installed directly on an ESX server from the command line, or through the VMware Update Manager (VUM).

COMMAND LINE INSTALLATION
New Installation
----------------
For new installs, you should perform the following steps:

1. Copy the component bundle to the ESX server. Technically, you can place the file anywhere that is accessible to the ESX console shell, but for these instructions, we'll assume the location is in '/tmp'.

   Here is an example of using the Linux 'scp' utility to copy the file from a local system to an ESX server located at 10.10.10.10:

   scp VMW-esx-7.0.0-VMware-nvmxnet3-2.0.0.30-1vmw.700.1.0.15511075.zip root@10.10.10.10:/tmp
2. Issue the following command (full path to the file must be specified):

esxcli software component apply {Component_File}

In the example above, this would be:

esxcli software component apply -d /tmp/VMW-esx-7.0.0-VMware-nvmxnet3-2.0.0.30-1vmw.700.1.0.15511075.zip

Note: Depending on the certificate used to sign the VIB, you may need to change the host acceptance level. To do this, use the following command:

esxcli software acceptance set --level=[level]

Also, depending on the type of VIB being installed, you may have to put ESX into maintenance mode. This can be done through the VI Client, or by adding the '--maintenance-mode' option to the above esxcli command.

Upgrade Installation
--------------------
The upgrade process is similar to a new install as the same command upgrades the component to a newer, if the prior version is already installed on ESXi server.

esxcli software component apply -d {Component_File}

VUM INSTALLATION
The VMware Update Manager (VUM) is a plugin for the Virtual Center Server (vCenter Server). You can use the VUM UI to install a Component by importing the associated component package (a ZIP file that contains the VIB and metadata). You can then create an add-on baseline and remediate the host(s) with this baseline. Please see the vCenter Server documentation for more details on VUM.