An administrator is upgrading an ESXi host from 5.5 to 6.0 and runs the following command: esxcli software vib list --rebooting-image What does this command show?

ESXi maintains two boot banks - the active bank currently running and a staged bank with pending changes. The --rebooting-image flag reads the staged bank and lists all VIBs that will be active once the host reboots, allowing administrators to verify that newly installed VIBs are correctly staged before committing to a reboot. This is particularly useful during upgrades to confirm the expected software state before taking the host offline.

VIBs that require a reboot are identified by a reboot-required flag visible in the installation output, not by the --rebooting-image filter, which targets the staged image regardless of whether individual VIBs need a reboot.

The currently running boot image is shown by omitting the --rebooting-image flag; adding this flag specifically shifts the query to the pending staged image rather than the live running image.

VIB origin or vendor classification (VMware, partner, community) is an attribute on each VIB record and is unrelated to the boot bank context that --rebooting-image selects.