Cannot download VIB: “This might be because of network issues or the specified VIB does NOT exist or does NOT have a proper ‘read’ privilege set. Please make sure the specified VIB exists and is accessible from vCenter”

Keeping an eye on the clock and sensitizing my customer (vSphere 7 EOL, Oct 25), I was on a vSphere 7 environment today where we wanted to install the latest patches. However, I was confronted with the error message above.

Let’s fix this real quick, first we need SSH access to our VCSA, via the Shell Command and Stop the VMware Update Manager Service:

shell
service-control –stop vmware-updatemgr

Now run the following commands to Reset VMware Update Manager Database and Delete the contents of the VMware Update Manager Patch Store:

/usr/lib/vmware-updatemgr/bin/updatemgr-utility.py reset-db
rm -rf /storage/updatemgr/patch-store/*

Finally Start the VMware Update Manager Service:

service-control –start vmware-updatemgr

Important to know: You may have to logoff and login to the vCenter again. In the context of vSAN environments, this process will also result in the removal of the vSAN default baselines. It should be noted that these baselines are automatically recreated in the event of a configuration change to vSAN. Such changes include the addition or removal of a host or disk, or an update to the HCL DB. It is still possible to safely update a vSAN cluster without the vSAN default baselines.

This procedure also deletes your download token links from the Broadcom portal. You will need to add these again. It is important to deactivate the default vCenter links and activate the Broadcom download token links instead.

Finally, sync your new download links again and lo and behold, the latest patches can be downloaded and the ESXi servers can be patched as desired.

That’s it from this post, if you have any questions please use the comment section below. 🙂