gotta say that I am really glad we didnt do the upgrade.

I don't mind installing a new system/cluster with the latest release (Update 2), but I'm always telling my clients to wait at least 2 weeks after an update (release of 3.5u2) before applying it to a production environment. I got burned once already with the Patch 5 or 6/7 for ESX 2.5.4 I believe.

You're a life saver, just spent the best part of an hour trying to get a critical VM running after it was powered off, disabling NTP, changing the date, powered on the VMs and turned NTP back on as we have restrictions on time. everything working fine for now!

Hope VMware get a fix out today, as my mum would say "I'm not angry just very disappointed!!!"

The ESX 3.5 update2 ISOs have been taken offline at least; I am not able to reach the KB article; it appears the server is "somewhat" busy

Anyone got a definitive answer on putting the date back and VMs that sync back with it while they should not? Was this issue seen only on VMs being started (which makes sense - BIOS time) or also on running VMs with or without timesync set?

Impeccable timing as well... it's Microsoft Patch Tuesday today isn't it? Good luck with not rebooting VM's over the next few days, a number of those patches are critical. Also just want to throw London into the mix as being affected, nice little global community in this thread

We have this issue in the UK too, I updated 1 x VC and 7 x ESX hosts yesterday to Update 2. The workaround has got things working for now, until we get the fix.

Scott.

Dear Customers,

An issue has been uncovered with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 that causes the product license to expire on August 12. VMware engineering has isolated the root cause of this issue and will reissue the various upgrade media including the ESX 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESXi 3.5 Update 2 ISO, ESX 3.5 Update 2 upgrade tar and zip files in the next 36 hours (by noon, August 13, PST). They will be available from the page: http://www.vmware.com/download/vi. Until then, we advise against upgrading to ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2.

The Update patch bundles will be released separately later in the week.

The issue is being tracked on KB 1006716 on http://kb.vmware.com/

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience that has been caused.

The VMware ESX Product Team

No one is jumping for new ISOs and upgrade TARs; most importantly we are looking for a quick fix aka patch for the problem (and I don't mean putting the date of the hosts back)!!

Just spent 3 hours tracing the problem before I stumbled on the hostd.log and then on this thread.
Can't access the KB article either.