Acronis Disaster Recovery Service: Upgrade LCA ESXi from ESXi 4.1 to 5.1 and Higher
Sometimes, you are not able to activate a server locally and receive an error like "Cannot find a suitable ESX host". The reasons may vary, e.g. insufficient RAM on the host for the server or incorrect VM parameters in the server disk string.
Another reason is that you are trying to activate a Windows Server 2012 on an ESX 4.x LCA. ESX 4 does not support Windows 2012. You can find the Guest OS compatibility guide here. In this case you need to update ESXi to at least 5.0 (5.1 for Windows 2012 R2).
Do the following to update your ESXi host:
- Obtain a USB flash drive 1+ Gb with standard or small external sizes (since there is little space inside the LCA) and format it to FAT32. A USB 1.0 or 2.0 8-16 Gb drive is recommended. Additional details here.
- Ensure there is full access to iDRAC and ESXi management IP addresses and firewall does not block connection between Acronis Cloud and the host.
- Plan a time frame for maintenance (update takes 3-6 hours) and create a support ticket in advance and ask Acronis Customer Central (support department for Acronis Disaster Recovery Service at https://dr.acronis.com/support/tickets or by e-mail) to shut down all virtual machines on the LCA.
- Once a support engineer has confirmed the LCA is powered off, detach the power cord, locate internal USB ports and attach your USB drive:
- Power on LCA, let support know that the USB drive is installed and ESXi is ready to be updated.