What is an HPE Custom Image?

Why Patch an HPE Custom Image?

Key Principle: You should always use an HPE Custom Image as your baseline, then apply VMware or HPE patches on top. Do not start from a vanilla VMware image on HPE hardware.

When you run esxcli software profile list, you'll see names like:

Always ensure you're patching to a profile that starts with HPE-.

To keep things clean, create a folder to hold your downloads and the final output.

Even experienced admins mess this up. Here are the top three failure modes when seeking a patched HPE image.

  • Reboot host and verify successful boot and hardware components.
  • Exit maintenance mode and run post-update checks (VMs, NIC/storage connectivity, logs).
    • # Check ESXi build version
vmware -vl

    PowerCLI is the PowerShell interface for VMware. You will use it to inject drivers and patches into the image.