On step #8 of the GUI installer there was no Network in the top drop down at all. Because of this when I attempted to proceed past this point I was met with:
No networks on the host. Cannot proceed with the installation.
The page looks like this:
What did I do wrong? How is it that I can query the datastore but no networks are available?
NOTE: I have searched for an answer to this already and the only thread that mentions this problem is from the VMWare forums and the answer was "You need to use standard switch to complete the upgrade process." This answer doesn't make sense as all of my switches are standard. None are distributed.
The mistake I made was assigning a virtual adapter to my "VM Network". I thought that my "VM Network" needed an IP. This is a basic misunderstanding of how ESXi works. Apparently, you can either assign a vmk(VM NIC) or VMs to a port group but not both. After I deleted the new vmk1 (VM NIC) that I made the port group became available to install vCenter in to.
I hope you can learn from my stupid mistake and fix this easier than I did. The default setup that ESXi comes with should work out of the box. If you added a vmk1 to your "VM Network" port group just delete the vmk1.