A little confused about ESXi 5 startup issue

[Indigo64]

Hey there everyone - I've been reading the forums and other documents online for the past few days, but I'm not sure I understand if there's a workaround for this particular issue.

I AM running the free version of ESXi 5 (with the license key installed on the host to remove the 60 day limit) on my own system here at home, and it works fine, but the autostart feature is not working for the specified VMs.  Problem is, I downloaded the image to install from just a few days ago, so I don't know if I got the latest version or if I can still "rollback" to the version of 5 that supports this feature.

I have pfsense installed on the host, and without that system starting up, if ESXi restarts or loses power & comes back up, it won't automatically start pfsense, and I lose all access to the house.  I thought I had researched this enough and thought I'd be OK to install ESXi 5, but obviously I missed something.

If I click Help > About VMWare in my vSphere client, it says that the Client is version 5.0.0 (Build 623373) and the VMware ESXi is Version 5.0.0 with a build of 623860.

Am I SOL here?  Or can I do something to restore this ability?

The system isn't anything super special - but I'd like to keep using ESXi compared to what I was using last.

I have experience with 4.x at work, so I was really excited to try out 5.

Nuts!

If there are well documented threads that attack my specific version, links to those threads is appreciated - search function seems to be mostly "miss" on the terms I'm picking.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately ESXi Update 1 broke the autostart for the free edition. However, this has been fixed with the latest patch (see http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2012/07/vsphere-hypervisor-auto-start-bug-fixed.html)

For how to apply updates on ESXi 5.0 see e.g. Updating ESXi 5 - Single use esxcli How To

André

[Indigo64]

Right, I knew about that - I just didn't know if there was a way to tell if I had that version installed - and I've never patched ESXi before, but I'll check that link out.

[a_p_]

The easiest way to find out which version is installed, is to compare the build number with http://vsphere-land.com/vinfo/release-build-info. Alternatively you can also check the official patch download page for build numbers.

André

[Indigo64]

And by the looks of it, I can't use any of the tools except for the local CLI to install updates?

Sheesh.

I'm guessing that I dropped ESXi 5 too quickly - I can't make any sense of any of this.  One article suggests using CLI tools, but the VMWare site says that those tools aren't for us free users.

Anyone have an easy to follow method for installing this patch for a first time free user?  I'm totally confused.

[Indigo64]

Well, I have SSH access to the system but that's all I know how to do.  I'm not even sure that I can do what I want from here. I uploaded the update ZIP to the first data storage drive on the server, and that's the extent of my knowledge.

EDIT:  Found this:  http://www.chriscolotti.us/vmware/vsphere/how-to-patch-vsphere-5-esxi-without-update-manager/

Which is exactly what I needed, and worked.

After I installed the update, I restarted the host - exited maintenance mode and restarted one more time.  Upon reboot of the host that second time, my pfsense VM started up by itself, followed by the other system for remote management that I needed.

Case closed. 

Message was edited by: Indigo64