HPE has stopped providing custom images and a vendor add-on depot for Synergy hardware starting with Synergy Service Pack 2026.01.01. You are able to use the HPE OneView plugin for vCenter to manage both drivers and firmware going forward. It sounds like you can generally just use the stock VMware image to initially build servers, but there are some corner cases where you may need an image. Another scenario would be having these drivers in a new VCF deployment before you are able to set up the vCenter plugin. I was able to figure out a process that seems to work well and does not require picking through the SSP to find all of the VIBs.
Prerequisites
- Have SSP 2026.01.02 (or any future SSP) added to your OneView instance.
- Download the offline depot for whatever version of ESX you want to use (VMware-ESXi-9.0.2.0.25148076-depot.zip for my example).
- Have the OneView for VMware vCenter integration deployed and configured with a vCenter instance.
- The vCenter version does not have to match the version of ESX you want to make an image for.
- I am using vCenter 8 to access the depot for the ESX 9 content.
- Register the SSP in the vCenter plugin and wait for the content to sync.
- A machine with PowerShell installed.
- You need to have the VCF.PowerCLI module installed.
- You need to have the necessary python dependencies for building an image installed as well.
- The machine needs access to port 3512 on your OneView for VMware vCenter appliance
Get SSP URL from lifecycle manager
Under the Lifecycle Manager in vCenter, you will see URLs added for the SSPs that have been registered under patch setup. For my environment, adding SSP 2026.01.02 added two download sources: https://ov4vc.example.com:3512/static/vsphere-web-client/xxxxxxxx/HPE-803.0.0.12.4.5.5-jan2026-Synergy-Addon-depot/index.xml
and https://ov4vc.example.com/3512/static/vsphere-web-client/xxxxxxxx/HPE-901.0.0.12.4.5.10-Jan2026-Synergy-Addon-depot/index.xml. “xxxxxxxx” is a placeholder for (what appears to be a randomly generated?) string.
The PowerShell Code
# specify the path to the ov4vc url and the offline depot
$ov4vcurl = "https://ov4vc.example.com/3512/static/vsphere-web-client/xxxxxxxx/HPE-901.0.0.12.4.5.10-Jan2026-Synergy-Addon-depot/index.xml"
$baseImage = Get-DepotBaseImages -Depot /path/to/VMware-ESXi-9.0.2.0.25148076-depot.zip
# The ov4vc depot only has components, it does not work with Get-DepotAddons
$depotComponents = Get-DepotComponents -Depot $ov4vcurl
# make a map of components that we can use in the image spec
$components = @{}
$depotComponents | ForEach-Object {$components[$_.Name] = $_.Version}
# extract the name of the depot for use in various file names
$addonDepotName = ($ov4vcurl -split '/')[-2] -ireplace "-addon-depot", ""
$name = "VMware-ESXi-$($baseImage.Version)-$($addonDepotName)"
# generate a json image spec
$imageSpec = @{add_on = $null; alternative_images = $null; base_image = @{version = $baseImage.Version}; components = $components; hardware_support = $null; removed_components = $null; solutions = $null}
$imageSpec | ConvertTo-Json | Out-File -FilePath "/path/to/$($name).json"
# generate the ISO
New-IsoImage -Depots /path/to/VMware-ESXi-9.0.2.0.25148076-depot.zip, $ov4vcurl -SoftwareSpec "/path/to/$($name).json" -Destination "/path/to/$($name).iso