External USB dock no longer works in esx 6 build 3825889

[vmwaresucksatre]

Hello there. We recently upgraded most of our ESX hosts to build number 3825889. Ever since then, I havent been able to get two external drives to work reliably over USB.

Basically what happens is that the drive just goes connected disconnected over and over again. Like the drive comes up, gets a drive letter and then immediately disconnects and does it all over again. I have two different docks i have tried, checked voltage on the power supply, tried different USB ports, etc. No change. I have tried other systems with the same build number and they have the same symptoms.

However, when i try it on a system with an earlier build number that was not upgraded, the drives work fine (build number 3247720).

I suspect bug with release, but cant find any other comments on the forums about it.

An interesting observation, is that i can get one drive powered on and working fine. but as soon as i go to add the second drive, everything gets wonky and unreliable with both drives disconnected and reconnecting over and over again.

anyone see this at all?

[vmwaresucksatre]

We now think that its vmware tools, That somehow got messed up. however i still havent been able to fix it yet.

- Other VMs that the dock is plugged into also exhibit this behaviour on other hosts.

- a non upgraded VM (vmwaretools), with brand new server 2012 does not have the problem. Even after i install the latest vmware tools.

- took esx all the way back to 6.0 release and the VM still could not mount the drives and have them stay mounted.

- changed usb 3.0 hardware card from ETRON to as??? something. no change in behaviour

- One single drive in the dock works fine.

- 2 docks connected to separate USB ports does not.

- tried obviously uninstalling and reinstalling vmware tools, and even completely uninstalling it, however i think some remnants remain because i can still seemlessly mouse into the VM. I dont see any way to completely install all of vmware tools, even the /c switch does not seem to get it so that my mouse is trapped in the VM.

Its like any time two external drives are connected in any configuration, they just disconnect reconnect over and over again.

I would just simply abandon this problematic VM, however it has a bunch of configuration on it that may be time consuming to duplicate. Also the problem my come back again and i should have a resolution imho.