VMware Communities: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences?

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153 Replies Last post: Sep 12, 2008 7:54 AM by JamesClements

ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences?

Aug 12, 2008 8:54 PM

JohnTroyer 921 posts since
Aug 30, 2005 VMware

Just posted:

KB with a description of what happened: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006716
ESX Express Patches: http://www.vmware.com/go/esxexpresspatches

Let's close down the other thread, as it's getting really long and hard to navigate.

Letter from Paul Maritz: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/162713. Please post non-technical commentary here.
Please post further technical commentary about the patches in this thread.

Thanks. Rest assured that many people inside VMware are reading your feedback and experiences here.

Tags: esx3.5u2, patches, august12

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:12 PM

akmolloy 45 posts since
Jul 9, 2007

I'll move my other post here:

To share my experience:

I had a host with VMs on it that could tolerate limited downtime, so went for it. I had SSH connected with the esxupdate command ready to go, and then shutdown the VMs and put the host in maintenance mode. I applied the patch, restarted vmware-hostd, and then restarted the servers. I believe the downtime was under 10 minutes.

I just tested, and VMotion works to that server now from my unpatched servers, so I can put the others in Maintenance mode and patch under less pressure.

-Tony

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:14 PM

in response to: akmolloy

kenner 88 posts since
Sep 29, 2007

I'm having a serious problem with the patch. I patched one host and it was OK as I started machines on it, but then I see infinite loops of machine state changes from ON to RECONFIGURING and back to ON when I look at the latest hostd.log. They are coming from VirtualCenter Server, but I can't figure out why or how to stop it from happening. It's keeping hostd too busy to do anything else, so I can't move machines to that host.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:27 PM

apservice 1 posts since
Jan 22, 2008

The application of the patch was the usual "esxupdate update" which ran very simply as usual. VMs can now power on and VMotion.

One other thing I've noticed is that somewhere along the line between 3.5 U1 and U2 the /etc/syslog.conf file was rewritten back to the defaults and my customisations have been removed. I haven't looked through the release notes to see if the syslog service was patched or updated.

Altonius

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:30 PM

joncellini 13 posts since
Jun 17, 2008

We've rolled out the ESX patch to a handful of systems and things are looking good so far.

The ESXi version of the patch is giving us a problem - it complains that the patch metadata is missing and then fails to install. The metadata was updated when the patches were imported into UM and everything looks to be correct. We are investigating the issue more at our site. Anyone else with ESXi installable or embedded have any luck?

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:30 PM

in response to: apservice

ElmbrookDan 10 posts since
Aug 6, 2008

I am new to vmware and only applied patches using Update Manager. Could someone explain briefly how to apply patches using the esxupdate. Do you have to download the patch- to your host?

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:36 PM

in response to: ElmbrookDan

larden 71 posts since
Jan 15, 2004

I have applied using Update Manager - as long as you can free up one host to put in maintenance mode you can do this without issue.

For esxupdate

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_esxupdate.pdf

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:35 PM

in response to: larden

ElmbrookDan 10 posts since
Aug 6, 2008

Thanks, good to know. I have 2 hosts one is running only 2 VM's which could be brought down for a bit. The other host has a few more VM's including my VirtualCenter. Yes I am running my VC in a VM and I know. So my plan is to patch the host that doesn't have the VC VM. Once that host is patched I will VMotion VC to the patched host and then patch the non patched host. Make sense? Anyone see a flaw in that plan?

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:37 PM

in response to: ElmbrookDan

larden 71 posts since
Jan 15, 2004

Sounds good to me.

I am rebooting the host also, even though it isn't required.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:38 PM

in response to: joncellini

Tibmeister 77 posts since
Jan 9, 2006

I've never had UM work right. For the host I use the Virtual Infrastructure Update program that get's installed with the client. The drawback is you have to connect the client to each host before the update program will see them as it is designed for stand-alone ESXi hosts.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:40 PM

RobertGreenlee 14 posts since
Jan 15, 2008

I'm going to update my other 2 affected hosts tomorrow morning with the patch (one host now has the hotfix and appears fine). I still have 2 other hosts in the cluster running Update 1. Should I want for a new version of Update 2 to come out to patch them or just load the original U2 from Update Manager and this hotfix. I'd like to get them all upgraded by this weekend. We have an planned outage window Sat night and I was to get all the VMtools upgraded on the clients.

Thanks

Robert

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:42 PM

in response to: RobertGreenlee

larden 71 posts since
Jan 15, 2004

IMHO - I would WAIT. I am going to rebuild our hosts with the "new" media when it comes out. I prefer to err on the side of caution, update + "fix" vs "update released after major QA with fix" I prefer the second option.

I can see VMWORLD being fun telling our war stories

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:47 PM

ADHDave 9 posts since
Jul 25, 2008

We're using ESX 3.5 Update 2 on a 2 host test cluster running 25 VM's, i disabled HA and set DRS to manual. I downloaded the patch using the update manager and also downloaded the zip file. I extracted and copied the files to the first host and used esxupdate to manually apply the patch and everything worked great. Just to see how it would behave with the other host i scanned it for updates and then remediated. Update manager tried to put the host in maintenace mode and each VM failed to move @ 10%, I cancelled the maintenance mode task, and tried DRS @ partial and full automation with the same result. Finally, powered off the VM's that were on that host and remediated again and it installed successfully. Re-enabled HA powered on all off VM's. I successfully manually migrated machines and try a test of HA in the morning

edit

added more info

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:49 PM

in response to: Tibmeister

joncellini 13 posts since
Jun 17, 2008

Tibmeister wrote:I've never had UM work right. For the host I use the Virtual Infrastructure Update program that get's installed with the client. The drawback is you have to connect the client to each host before the update program will see them as it is designed for stand-alone ESXi hosts.

To be candid our experiences with ESXi updating have been mixed in general. We are trying to use UM to patch an ESXi embedded host right now - if that chokes too we will try the offline patch route.

I'll post back if we have any luck.

Reply Re: ESX 3.5U2 Patch experiences? Aug 12, 2008 9:55 PM

rmumford 3 posts since
Aug 12, 2008

Just applied the patch to my first ESX server, as I am entering maintenance mode in my second one, it is not migrating any VM's to my first ESX server. I have a total of 6 hosts, and the remaining are getting quite full.

In summary of patched ESX server, error is "HA agent on esx001.xxxx.xxx in cluster ESX Cluster in xxx has an error." I am able to manually migrate to this box, but it is not moving automatically.

I have tried to Reconfigure for VMware HA one time with no luck. Any ideas?

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