How to Upgrade Standalone ESXi 5.5 to 6.0

Download the the offline bundle (depot file) for ESXi 6.0 from here
filename VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip

Activate SSH, shut down all your VMs and enter maintenance mode

Upload the file to your datastore

Note: If you run the command with “install” switch, all your personalized drivers of officially unsupported NICs will be deleted. You might consider using the second command with the “update” switch instead (you can add option –dry-run to perform a dry-run only)

esxcli software profile update -d /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/VMware-ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-depot.zip -p ESXi-6.0.0-2494585-standard

 

 

more info

Patch ESXi 5.5 to ESXi 6.0 – Lab Time

ESXi Offline Bundle Download – To Upgrade ESXi