VMware Cloud Community
ufo8mydog
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

ESX 3.5U4 Upgrade and Issues Thread

Hi all,

Now that U4 has come out, has anyone had a chance to be a guinea pig and test it - have you had any issues, bugs, or weird stuff happen? (well, a lot of weird stuff happens with ESX. It is just a matter of degree Smiley Happy).

Tags (4)
Reply
0 Kudos
115 Replies
bgrichting
Contributor
Contributor

Just wanted to say thanks to kooltechies. I had the same problem with the console just not working on a new ESX 3.5 (error connecting to authd...)- Tried every other tip (network, allow-list, port 902/903 etc.).

Finally adding the line

vmauthd.server.alwaysproxy = "true"

to the config file did the job for me. Now i can connect to the console.

THX,

Bertrand

Reply
0 Kudos
acnsys
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have updated my VC to U4 and some hosts that dont run VMs. I cannot upgrade the tools on the VMs right now, is it ok though to start upgrading my hosts to U4 where the VMs are running?

Reply
0 Kudos
Kosch
Contributor
Contributor

We have almost finished upgrading our hosts to u4 and havent encountered any issues with not upgrading the guest tools right away.

Reply
0 Kudos
Datto
Expert
Expert

>> Today I upgraded to U4 and upon loggin in on Infrastructure I got the "... does not have persistent storage" dialog box. No VMFS partitions are visible, they are still there.

Don't know if anyone has helped yet but see if you can change the way your SATA controller is portrayed in your System BIOS (change from being portrayed as IDE to ACHI or vice-versa) and see if your local storage shows up after the reboot of the ESX host.

Datto

Reply
0 Kudos
blaine74
Contributor
Contributor

Same problem with emulex lp1050 ...

"Driver lpfcdfc is incompatable with libdfc"

Reply
0 Kudos
tomaz
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

With U4 and this Emulex card I can no longer use 1TB LUN at all. Can not format it at all. U1 worked fine with it.

Reply
0 Kudos
off_road
Contributor
Contributor

My personal U4 upgrade experience:

Upgraded 10 ESX hosts running on BL460C blades - no issues; (I'm not running the HP mgmt agents)

Upgraded 2 ESX hosts running on DL585 - no issues.

Upgraded 3 Vcenter servers - 2 use local SQL db and required a reboot after U4 install; 3rd one uses separate SQL server and did not need a restart. Also, noticed that after Vcenter upgrade, the new vcenter agent is installed on the ESX hosts. This installed fine but I had to enable-re-enable HA on some of the hosts. Didn't cause any issues, just had to reconfigure a few times on some before they seemed to accept the upgrade.

Upgraded several VI clients - no issues.

Reply
0 Kudos
JonT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Balmer,

Have you been able to resolve this issue yet? I am also waiting for a newer version of lputil but not sure when Emulex will release one. Ever since the U4 upgrade I can no longer use lputil to upgrade my HBA firmware which was my tool of choice. I have not yet attempted to use HBAnywhere but that is going to be my next move...

Thanks,

Jon

Reply
0 Kudos
RobMokkink
Expert
Expert

After update 2, the lpfutil does not work.

But these days we are trying to avoid installing any 3rd party tools inside the service console.

For firmware updates etc i use Winpe (WDS/MDT) the hardware get prepped and the firmware on all our servers is on the same level.

Updating the firmware for the HBA's with Winpe is easy.

Reply
0 Kudos
JonT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Rob,

I hear you on the suggestion for WinPE. We used to update all the HBA firmware in our blades with a windows script or using a Win loaded blade. I prefer the LPUTIL but since Emulex hasn't released a new one for a while I am looking into using HBAnywhere remotely from a Windows master HBAnywhere server....trouble is my HBAnywhere installations on ESX are not the "remote" server type yet. I will post my test results using HBAnywhere when I get it working, unless of course someone has beaten me to this punch and figured out a good way to update HBA firmware without using an alternate OS boot. I suppose my last option after HBAnywhere would be a PXE boot into an RDP/Linux boot, running the firmware updates via a scripted HPSUM update then deploying the GRUB image.....GAH i just hate redoing everything that is so cookie cutter because the vendor will not update their software......

Thanks,

Jon

Reply
0 Kudos
abaum
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Just out of curiosity, what server hardware are you running? If you are running HP, just download the latest HP firmware CD. I noticed the last time that I updated my server BIOS, it also updated my Emulex HBAs.

Adam

Reply
0 Kudos
dinny
Expert
Expert

I raised a call with Emulex about the lack of support for lputil with ESX 3.5 u4.

Apparently lputil is no longer supported with the newer HBA drivers.

Ongoing hbanyware is the only supported tool - there is now a version specific to ESX 3.5 U4 on the Emulex site

http://www.emulex.com/downloads/emulex/cnas-and-hbas/drivers/vmware/fc-74041-pkg.html

However this can be used locally on ESX to apply firmware updates (no need to use a separate boot disk, or run hbanyware remotely)

/usr/sbin/hbanyware/hbacmd ListHBAs is a good starting command - WWNs can then the copied from the output of that command (irritatinly they are a mandatory parameter in most of the commands

Full list in the command line manual also referenced in the link above

Cheers

Dinny

Reply
0 Kudos
JonT
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the follow-up, and I kind of figured they wouldn't continue the easier utility to use. HBAnywhere is not a suitable replacement in my opinion so I will continue to build my hosts with U2, do all my firmware maintenance and then use Update manager to update my ESX hosts. Sad that it came to this but oh well.

Reply
0 Kudos
FJF
Contributor
Contributor

Hope this is the right thread.

Believe it or not i am new to ESXi but have used VMWare products before but haven't had to read the documentation.

Installation of ESXi 4 was a breez.

Performance of hypervisor is good to pretty good.

There are some bugs.

1) Removing resources from virtual guest machines does not remove the resources from hard disk. For example add two drives and then delete one.

2) Removing resources is not reflected in the BIOS settings of the VM guest. (ie floppy drive)

3) During boot up of a guest VM it is at times impossible to start BIOS to change its settings. The VM guest window constantly lost the focus.

Hope this helps.

Best Regards //// http://www.checknetworks.com http://www.checknetworks.co.uk innovative practical solutions For a more secure online trading
Reply
0 Kudos
s1xth
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

For number 3 you can change the boot time to any number you like so you can see the screen for the bios option or boot options. Its under the settings of the VM itself and you can change the boot 'delay' time.

http://www.virtualizationimpact.com http://www.handsonvirtualization.com Twitter: @jfranconi
Reply
0 Kudos
bitsorbytes
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

FJF wrote :

There are some bugs.

1) Removing resources from virtual guest machines does not remove the resources from hard disk. For example add two drives and then delete one.

When you say resources, I assume you mean HDD's as you say its not deleted from the harddisk. If your deleting just one HDD when you click delete, there is a option box on the right hand side, it says Remove from virtual machine or remove from virtual machind and delete file from disk......

If its an enitre machine then right click on the VM, and select delete from disk. Will remove the entire VM from disk!

2) Removing resources is not reflected in the BIOS settings of the VM guest. (ie floppy drive)

Floppy drive? Yes its a 'feature' Just like a real PC if you unplug a floppy drive, you have to go into the BIOS and tell the the BIOS its been removed.

3) During boot up of a guest VM it is at times impossible to start BIOS to change its settings. The VM guest window constantly lost the focus.

Edit the VM settings, under options, then boot options, change the value to 10000 for a 10 sec delay or tick the force BIOS setup on next reboot for a one time use.

Reply
0 Kudos