ESXi 5.5 /vmware_f.v00: file not found

[frenchyaz]

We are running ESXi 5.5 and wanted to upgrade to 6. Unfortunately the remediation of the cluster was failing at around 7%. We decided to reboot every server, one by one of course in order to clear up the situation.

1) We entered manually the server in maintenance mode

2) We told vcenter to reboot the server

3) At reboot we got the message: /vmware_f.v00: file not found Fatal error: 15 (not found)

4) Through ILO we did a reset of the server

5) At reboot we got the message: /vmware_f.v00: file not found Fatal error: 15 (not found)

6) Through ILO we did a reset of the server

7) At reboot we got the message: /vmware_f.v00: file not found Fatal error: 15 (not found)

😎 We decided to do a cold boot through ILO

9) The server started normally

The question is: What does a cold boot that the reset process doesn't do to fix this particular issue?

We repeated the same process with the same results on 4 other servers. Only the cold boot worked, any ideas?

If you have an opinion, let us know!

After that of course we were able to remediate the cluster to upgrade to 6 and every thing was fine, just this hiccup that we are trying to understand.

Note: all the servers have local HDD where the hypervisor is located, we don't boot from SAN or any other devices. The servers are HP from different generation.

Thanks!

[eisbergjason]

We are seeing similar behaviour as well.  I am in the process of cycling through our environment to get up to the latest patch set released for 5.5.  I've gone through about 15-20 hosts and have had this issue appear 4 or 5 times now.  I attempt to do remediation through Update Manager to apply the patches.  When I've see this issue appear, I get the below error:

"The host returns esxupdate error code:15. The package manager transaction is not successful.  Check the Update Manager log files and esxupdate log files for more details."

When I check the logs, I see nothing of interest.  A soft or hard reset clears the issue.

[martincortez75]

Yes, that solution works for me. I just reboot ESX host and it back on.

Thanks

JC