Hello everyone,

I got an issue with updating ESX 3.5 hosts - the problem is that vCenter Update Manager seems not to be able to check the ESX hosts for installed updates.

My environment:

I'm using vCenter Server 4.1.0 (Build 258902, German-000)  to manage two ESXi 4.1 and one ESX 3.5 cluster(s). The ESX 3.5 cluster includes 4 hosts with ESX 3.5.0 (Build 283373).

For deploying updates I'm using Update Manager 4.1 which works fine for my two ESXi 4.1 clusters.

The problem:

It's not possible to update/check the hosts of the ESX 3.5 cluster. VMware Update Manager is configured to download patches for ESX 3.5 - the repository is configured and Update Manager also downloaded patches for ESX 3.5. If I try to validate the compliance of a single host (or the whole cluster) I'll get the following error message:

"Checking (HOSTNAME) for updates not possible"

"Status: Unknown error"

Troubleshooting:

I found the following knowledge base article: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1032444&sliceId=1&docTypeID=DT_KB_1_1&dialogID=278958492&stateId=1%200%20278956864

• Patches for ESX have been downloaded correctly as I saw in the task list.
  
• Pinging the vCenter was possible using the IP address, DNS wasn't working at that time due to search domain misconfiguration. I fixed that by entering the correct DNS search domain in the file /etc/resolv.conf
  
• Disk space should be enough I think:
  
  # df -h
  Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
  /dev/sda2             4.9G  2.9G  1.7G  63% /
  /dev/sda1              99M   32M   63M  34% /boot
  none                  250M     0  250M   0% /dev/shm
  /dev/sda5             2.0G   33M  1.9G   2% /tmp
  /dev/sda6             2.0G  208M  1.7G  11% /var/log
  
• I saw that the update manager was disabled on the host and enabled it:
  
  # esxcfg-firewall -e updateManager
  # esxcfg-firewall -q updateManager
  Service updateManager is enabled.
  

Checking the host is still not possible - do I have to reboot the ESX host because of the modification of resolv.conf?

Does anybody have a tip for me? I couldn't find a solution for my problem using the search.

Thanks a lot in advance!