ESXi 7 Error Scanning for Updates - The host returns esxupdate error codes: -1.

[bmstewart]

I recently got around to upgrading some old hosts from 6.7 to 7.0 U3.

They're Dell PowerEdge R6515 servers. I used the Dell customized ISO, and it seemed to work fine. (I had to manually remove the old Dell iSM VIB before upgrading ESXi to 7.0 U3.)

After the hosts came back up, I attempted to scan them for updates against the normal, pre-defined patch baselines and I get the following error:

The host returns esxupdate error codes: -1. Check the Lifecycle Manager log files and esxupdate log files for more details

Connecting to one of the hosts via SSH and checking the log, I see the following:

grep -i error /var/run/log/esxupdate.log

esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: Traceback (most recent call last):
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/usr/sbin/esxupdate", line 222, in main
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: cmd.Run()
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esx5update/Cmdline.py", line 107, in Run
esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Transaction.py", line 96, in DownloadMetadatas
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: m.ReadMetadataZip(mfile)
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Metadata.py", line 158, in ReadMetadataZip
esxupdate: ERROR: self.bulletins.AddBulletinFromXml(content)
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Bulletin.py", line 840, in AddBulletinFromXml
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: b = Bulletin.FromXml(xml)
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Bulletin.py", line 660, in FromXml esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: kwargs.update(cls._XmlToKwargs(node, Errors.BulletinFormatError))
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Bulletin.py", line 528, in _XmlToKwargs
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: kwargs['platforms'].append(SoftwarePlatform.FromXml(platform))
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Vib.py", line 221, in FromXml
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: return cls(xml.get('version'), xml.get('locale'),
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Vib.py", line 168, in init
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: self.SetVersion(version)
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/lib64/python3.8/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Vib.py", line 192, in SetVersion
esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: raise ValueError("Invalid platform version '%s'" % version) esxupdate: 2102453: esxupdate: ERROR: ValueError: Invalid platform version '6.7*'

I can't tell what that's coming from.
Any ideas?

Thanks

[bmstewart · Accepted solution]

In case anyone comes across this in the future, we opened a support ticket and provided some logs.  It looks like the Lifecycle Manager was still treating the host as if it were a 6.7 host, or was otherwise trying to push out an older Dell plugin to the host.

The fix was to reset the Lifecycle Manager (Update manager) database as described in the following article :https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147284

Then Lifecycle Manager was able to check compliance of the host, as expected.  We upgraded the rest of our hosts and the Lifecycle manager was able to check their compliance without issue as well.  So I think we're all set.