VMware Communities: Message List - 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Quinsee — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:00:43 GMT

I have 3 Dell GX520s with A11 BIOS (the BIOS upgrade labels it as a GX620 so I assume it's the same). To clarify, these GX520s are the single core 3GHz GX520s with the ICH-7 chipset.

I tried modifying the simple.map on the CD with the U2 values, but after burning the CD and booting from it, I get a pink screen of death telling me that:

Cannot set up ramdisk: Boot image is corrupted

frame=0x1402c44...

... VisorFSObj: 2165: Tar header is invalid for etc/vmware/simple.map

No place on disk to dump data...

I can include the rest of it, but that is, to my untrained eye, the pertinent parts.

At this point, I'm trying to locate a U2 install disk and will just use it to install then try the fix on the installed system.

If anyone else has been successful getting a CD with the changes to boot, please let me know how you did it and I'll try to recreate that.

Quinsee

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

RS_1 — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 16:58:32 GMT

Actually, the real answer is here : link

thanks to Duncan

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

dane — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:59:45 GMT

NB !! Sorry, autoanswer got posted

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

MikeAT — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:51:26 GMT

double post

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

MikeAT — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:51:15 GMT

double post

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

MikeAT — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:25:41 GMT

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

MikeAT — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:53:45 GMT

LOL yesterday i installed the U3 on the first box today there 6 new patches....

In which order would you manually install the 6 patches from 12/02? I tried to install the patches in the order ESX350-200811401-SG, ...02, ...05, ...06, ...08 and ...09. But because the patch ESX350-200811401-SG has a dependency to the patch ESX350-200811402-SG thats not possible. There are also some other dependencies between that 6 patches - so which install order would be the best?

Mike

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

OlivR — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:03:35 GMT

Great, thanks!

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

RS_1 — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:56:46 GMT

At last, the patch is out : http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1007501

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

mriz — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:50:32 GMT

I have tried to change the lines in simple.map file but still i cannot find my harddisk under storage. Any idea? I am using Optiplex gx620 with usb esxi U3 and i have modifed the oem.tgz file and after reboot i have checked the file located in /etc/vmware/simple.map that new values are prsented there.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

AdRem — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:43:28 GMT

After a few days of playing around with this version, I found that "Health Status" stops working every 24 hours or something on supported Dell PE 2950-III machine.
It's because of "pegasus" service which stops working with any trace in logs...

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

OlivR — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:32:53 GMT

Any news about this patch? Are SP3 files going to be updated?

It looks to me like it's a pretty serious problem, did anybody at VMWare oficially agreed with this problem? Also I think adding a note on the dowload page would be rather useful... Like saying the know bug for the current SP and provide link to the patches.

Olivier

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:47:26 GMT

I am using the A11 bios as well.

Using "unsupported" access to the console in ESXi, I modified "/etc/vmware/simple.map"

Here's a section for the Intel ICH7 controller from ESXi 3.5 U3:

8086:27c0 0000:0000 storage ide
8086:27c1 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c3 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c4 0000:0000 storage ide
8086:27c5 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c6 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27df 0000:0000 storage ide

Here's a section for the Intel ICH7 controller from ESXi 3.5 U2:

8086:27c0 0000:0000 storage ata_piix
8086:27c1 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c3 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c4 0000:0000 storage ata_piix
8086:27c5 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27c6 0000:0000 storage ahci
8086:27df 0000:0000 storage ide

I modified the values in blue to be the ones in red. Then I rebooted the box.

I could then see the controller properly, but couldn't see my VMFS volume.

I then modifed the LVM.EnableResignature = 1 host setting, and rescanned my storage controllers. (In Configuration/Advanced Settings)

I could then see the VMFS volume, even though it had a different name

Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

ivcjbeaty — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 23:56:37 GMT

Check this link for first major oops... http://www.ivobeerens.nl/?p=180

I agree testing out new updates is wise, Microsoft has taught us that, but isn't it the responsibility of the OS distributor to do that. I mean they have a lot more resources than a "Joe computer tech" at a small organization like me. On this one I was more cautious after Update 2.

Oh I found this link because my "testing" resulted in the scenario described and the solution worked.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

flook1985 — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:17:01 GMT

Jase,

Would you be willing to be bit more descriptive about how you go this to work on you optiplex gx620(I'm a novice ...)? I have 3 of these boxes and would really like to get ESX 3.5 update 3 working on 2 them then use the 3rd for an Openfiler iSCSI box. It would be nice to be able to put a couple of vm's on the host's instead of relying completely on iSCSI...

I don't know what "simple.map" is ...What are the exact changes I would need to make to this?

BTW - I have updated the BIOS to A11

Thanks,

Greg

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

RS_1 — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 23:02:20 GMT

We got the same problem today

thanks for the workaround guys.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

deere — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:08:33 GMT

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

deere — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:05:56 GMT

3.5.0 Rlease 3 working fine for two weeks, suddenly yesterday, purple screen with a skb_over_panic message error, server never back on 14 production VM's had to be manually moved to other 3.0.1 Server, still investingating what the heck is going on....head ache..be careful guys !!!!

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

ufo8mydog — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:51:33 GMT

I can confirm that we've had the same random reboot issue, the only way to stop it is to disable virtual machine monitoring.

I'll be looking forward to the updated patch, but it does look like VMWare's Q&A team have dropped the ball again on U3.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

ief — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:54:26 GMT

VMware support told me today that they will relase tommorow patch 10 for Update 3 that fixes some random reboot problems.

www.ivobeerens.nl

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

ief — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:55:21 GMT

I have upgraded 8 VMware ESX hosts to 3.5 Update 3 and VC 2.5 Update 3. We experience the same problem as reidg1785 explianed. After we set DRS to manual and disable Virtual Machine Monitoring the random reboots of the VM's stops. I have created a support request @ VMware, no solution yet.

www.ivobeerens.nl

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

reidg1785 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:50:59 GMT

That option is diabled on all my VMs.

-Reid

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

bitsorbytes — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:24:29 GMT

@reidg1785 - Do you have auto upgrade of the tools turned on?

It seems a 'bug' that the tools auto upgrade and then restart! Even though the checkbox is called 'Check and upgrade tools before each power-on"

BEFORE each power on doesn't seem to the be the case!

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

williambishop — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:36:03 GMT

This will eventually bite you in the keester.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

jrglines — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 14:22:27 GMT

All VM's experienced a forced reset after VMotion so tested it by shutting down a VM, moving it from the U2 to U3 host, and restarting. Same result, forced reset.

Also found the following in the system log of each vm:

Event ID: 44

Windows has detected that the system firmware (BIOS) was updated

previous firmware date = 01/30/08, current firmware date 07/22/08

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

peetz — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 07:22:30 GMT

Hi,

do you have Virtual Machine Monitoring enabled in the HA options?

According to this post this might be a problem in U3. I have not tested this myslf so far. Anyone else?

Andreas

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

twoodland — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 04:09:20 GMT

Unfortunately, not everyone has lab environments, like the location of my employment. But, when that is the case, it's nice to let those with lab environments hammer on the update for a while before proceeding. I'm not sure how responsible it is to rush into a new release on something supporting business critical applications, certainly not "hardcore."

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 00:49:07 GMT

Dave,

I put the old settings in my simple.map, and then rebooted the host.

I could then see the controller properly, but couldn't see my VMFS volume.

I then modifed the LVM.EnableResignature = 1 host setting, and rescanned my storage controllers.

I could then see the VMFS volume.

The funny thing is, after another several reboots, the simple.map reverted to the old settings, but I could still see the storage.

Strange.

Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

240Zeus — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:16:53 GMT

Absolutely! In enterprises where downtime means a potential of millions of dollars of lost revenue, I prefer to actually have my infrastructure functional and use the lab for what it should be used for - learning/testing. If you're learning in your production environment, that is pretty "hardcore" if that's really the word you prefer to describe that practice with. I think some of us would choose a different term.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

tolstoy143 — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:47:55 GMT

U3 has rendered my NFS datastores unable to come online after a host reboot, and therefore my VMs will not autostart.

I have a thread in this group. I basically have to refresh my datastores to bring them online, then manually start my VMs.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

grndmstr — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:44:56 GMT

some of us prefer production uptime, reducing the cost to the business and less users yelling at us when something is broken rather than being HARDCORE and staying ahead of the curve..

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

qmcnetwork — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 20:52:01 GMT

Updated 4 ESX servers so far and no issues. I upgraded 3 IBM x346 servers thru VI Update Manager plugin to ESXi 3.5U3. The only thing was I had to run it through remediation 3 times. The first time I think it failed because it tried to apply an older patch (U2 maybe). The second time it applied U3 just fine, but didn't install the tools package. Finally I ran the remediate again to install tools.

On the 4th system, a HP bl460c blade, I remediated to ESX 3.5U3. No issues except it too about 50 to 60 minutes to complete. I thought that was kinda long. I plan on doing the next 6 blades just like it this week.

-Jonathan

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:20:13 GMT

I would...

Well, I'm going to try to play with that some today, as the box isn't usable without any VM's, and I can't have any VM's without a datastore...

I'll post what I find.

Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

zik — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:52:25 GMT

Agreed, but testing would not have uncovered the 3.5U2 bug.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:20:20 GMT

Yeah,

We follow the HCL too, in production.

But we also test... Because often times, being on the cutting edge of tech/patches/features... doesn't necessarily agree with current configurations. And that's why you test...

When downtime can cost you or your customers millions of dollars... It doesn't really pay to be on the cutting edge right away.

Cheers.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

reidg1785 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:01:22 GMT

Gave it a shot on one of my ESX servers. VMotioned all the VMs onto another server while updating this one. After it was rebooted and out of maintenance mode I moved some VMs on to it, ones that didn't really matter if they had a problem, and within minutes they just rebooted. Once they are on the server they seem OK. Just out of curiosity, I moved one back to the Update 2 server and it didn't reboot. When I moved it back to the U3 server it rebooted again. Has anybody else experienced this? I couldn't bring both servers to U3 to see if it was just a compatibility issue between U2 and U3 after the VMotion because I didn't want to have the major servers go reboot.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:49:36 GMT

Would you be able to update both 27c0 and 27c4 and then post a copy of the file here? I'm sure you won't be the last one to have this problem.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:21:36 GMT

I'll give that a try...

Thanks.

Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:14:50 GMT

They've made some changes in the PCI database that you should be able to work around with a custom simple.map file. The first list is from update 2 and the 2nd is update 3. You'll see that they've started using the IDE driver instead of ata_piix. This is likely to do with the fact that the ICH7 controller is now supported in IDE mode for use with SATA CD-ROMs.

8086 27c0 0000 0000 storage ata_piix 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE
8086 27c1 0000 0000 storage ahci 82801GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI
8086 27c3 0000 0000 storage ahci 2801GR/GH (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller RAID
8086 27c4 0000 0000 storage ata_piix 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE
8086 27c5 0000 0000 storage ahci 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI
8086 27c6 0000 0000 storage ahci 82801GHM (ICH7-M DH) Serial ATA Storage Controller RAID
8086 27df 0000 0000 storage ide 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:55:15 GMT

Well, given that everything in this world is free... Software, Hardware, etc... I figured I wouldn't be stingy.

And up until I ran the updates, I had 2 SQL boxes on it, 1 biztalk server, 1 virtual desktop, and 2 web servers.

And it ran like a champ.

But again, it is test, and not prod.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

jketron — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:51:46 GMT

I have done some DL380 G5's and DL585 G2

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

RParker — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:50:04 GMT

Dell Optiplex GX620

Decent for a Windows box MAYBE, but it's not on the HCL, so all bets are off... That's why we follow the HCL, if it's not there, you can't expect it to be fully supported. . . .

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Jasemccarty — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:13:13 GMT

ESX & ESXi 3.5 Update 3, rendered my Dell Optiplex GX620's local datastore useless.

The upgrade (and fresh install) will not support a VMFS file system on my ICH-7 based controller.

To be honest with you, it kind of preturbs me, given that it is a decent box to test on.

Now I've got to go get another controller, or setup another box with an NFS or ISCSI target? That's just silly, especially when 3.5.0, 3.5.0 U1 and 3.5.0 U2 worked fine.

Jase McCarty
http://www.jasemccarty.com
Co-Author of VMware ESX Essentials in the Virtual Data Center
(ISBN:1420070274) from Auerbach

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

RParker — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:46:40 GMT

I think the previous post put the hammer on the nail. TEST IT IN THE LAB/R&D!!!!! I

BAH! We upgraded, Production. So what? I always stay ahead of the curve.

I have little sympathy for folks that take bleeding edge releases right into production with no testing. Everyone was quick to blame VMware for not finding a bug when almost none of them bothered to test anything themselves.

And you call yourself a TECH!??! Hahaha.. that's funny... You have little sympathy eh, or maybe you don't have what it takes to know your envirnoment and know how to solve issues, that's what it sounds like to me. What's the matter Col. Sanders, chicken?!?!?

We have a checklist of items to check when upgrading any OS whether it be Windows or ESX. I highly recommend everyone do the same before they rush to criticize VMware.

Good! But don't criticize those that enjoy playing with the NEW stuff when it comes out. If it breaks I can fix it.. I support it, that's what we are here for to LEARN! Someone has to be first, so you over conservative people can know what to expect. I prefer to stay AHEAD of the game rather than hearing it second hand...

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

jketron — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:37:57 GMT

I have upgrades several server so far and not had an issue YET. I did notice that build 120512 in the configuration tab had a Health Status button that showed nice info from the SIM agent on a HP server and in U3 123630 it is gone.

Does anyone know where the Health Status button or info has gone in U3?

Also, I have not had any Vmotion issues between U2 and U3, I did not do fresh installs, I patched all the servers using the patching process and they work fine SO FAR.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

donikatz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:45:23 GMT

Full_Halsey wrote:
I have little sympathy for folks that take bleeding edge releases right into production with no testing. Everyone was quick to blame VMware for not finding a bug when almost none of them bothered to test anything themselves.

I don't think that's a fair comment re the U2 bug, because it was accidental kill date code that had nothing to do with end-user testing. Plenty of people had it in test for a while, looked stable, rolled live, later the date kill went into effect. It was quite correct to blame VMW for that one.

That said, of course it is important to always put new released into test first. But unless you have a lot of money to truly replicate a prod environment in test, it's usually even better to wait for some serious prod feedback from others as well. Usually no reason to jump headfirst into anything new unless there's something critical.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

lamw — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:27:47 GMT

Upgraded two BL460c with emulex FC's and the systems seems to be running okay, further testing and time.... will tell. Also have ESXi U3 on another Bl460c, haven't loaded any VMs on the system yet. I've heard that vmfs-undelete may have been successful for one individual on the forums, I haven't tried that yet but will be testing that functionality soon enough.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Dave.Mishchenko — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:08:58 GMT

Your post has been moved to the VI: ESX 3.5 forum.

Dave Mishchenko
VMware Communities User Moderator

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

Full_Halsey — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:06:41 GMT

I think the previous post put the hammer on the nail. TEST IT IN THE LAB/R&D!!!!! I have little sympathy for folks that take bleeding edge releases right into production with no testing. Everyone was quick to blame VMware for not finding a bug when almost none of them bothered to test anything themselves. I for one will test this in my test lab. We have a checklist of items to check when upgrading any OS whether it be Windows or ESX. I highly recommend everyone do the same before they rush to criticize VMware.

That's my 2 cents and beleive me, that's all it's worth.

Re: 3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

khughes — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:35:11 GMT

I'm downloading it and will play with it in our R/D area but as for production it will be some time, if ever we migrate up to U3, not many things fix/new in this version that benifit us

Kyle

3.5U3 - any guinea pigs yet?

sgorham — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:05:13 GMT

After the issues that happened with U2 I am curious to see if folks have played with U3 yet. I, for one, won't even think about it for some time