Upgrading hosts from 3.5 U1 to 3.5 U4 taking 3 times normal duration

[jmedd]

I have a number of hosts to upgrade from 3.5 U1 to 3.5 U4 for which I am using Update Manager on Virtual Center 2.5 U4. During my initial testing it was taking approx 20 mins to completely update the host, including the reboot and final tasks. All the baseline contains is ESX 3.5 U4.

During the weekend just gone I upgraded a number of hosts of identical hardware to those in the testing and the time to complete each one was approx 1hr 10 mins. During the installation time processor usage on the host is high for the intital 20 mins then nothing for 10

mins - this coincides with 'Installing' messages in VC for 20 mins then nothing in VC for 10 mins. Subsequently there is a similar pattern of high process for 10 mins, then nothing for 10 mins and carries on

like this until completion.

The behaviour and time to completion is the same whether I update two hosts concurrently or a single host at a time.

This is causing me significant issues for the amount of time to complete the remaining hosts. Does anyone have any ideas on how I might get the speeds back up to the initial levels or maybe my expectations are too high and this is the expected time it should take to carry out the update from U1 to U4?

Thanks

[Stu_McHugh]

I have noticed the same behavor. I did the same update, from U1 to U4 and using update manager it took about 1 hour and 30 mins. Sticking the CD in and doing it that way seams to be a better option. I'll be interested in finding out what the problem is.

Stuart

[jmedd]

Thanks, it's good to hear that I am not the only one who has seen this. Good suggestion about the manual update, I have approx 50 hosts to update though so I'm hoping not to visit each one with a CD!

I've also logged a ticket with VMware to see if I can get any feedback from them.

[jmedd]

OK, the feedback from VMware support is that approx 1 hour for this kind of patching is fairly normal within an environment our size. It seems there is a direct correlation between how busy your Virtual Center is and how long the host takes to remediate, which goes some way to explaining why its quicker in our test environment.

It's going to be a long patching weekend :smileysilly: