Windows Update on VMs seems to only work one at a time

[alwalters]

I have a handful of Win 2012 R2 VMs (running on ESXi 5.5) I've inherited. I've tried 3 or 4 times to update them now since taking them over, and noticed the strangest thing - only one of them will download updates at a time. If I start the update on all of them, the others will just hang at 0%. A little while after one finishes, another one will finally start to download. I'm completely stumped as to why/how this could be happening. Is this even possible, or just an incredibly strange coincidence? Is there anything I can check to prove one way or the other? I'm wondering if it's something odd like they were all cloned from one base VM in some odd way such that WU is seeing them as the same server when they try to connect or something... Other computers can connect to WU while this is happening; it's just this little cluster of VMs that were all built together.

[bspagna89]

Hi,

Just curious, is Windows firewall on or off? This seems more of an in guest issue to me. Do you have any servers on the same VLAN that are not VMs and do they experience the same issue? Is a proxy server in the environment and or configured in IE by chance? Can you also verify that you are using VMXNET3 network adapters?

Let me know. Hope some of this helps.

[weblee]

Check the WUS service - if the service is set to manual it seems to wait.  Set it to auto  delayed start, reboot and try again.

[alwalters]

No other machines on the network have this same issue - just these VMs.  The firewall is on, yes.  And we're not using proxies.

As for the network adapters - I only have one option under network adapters, and it just says Intel Gigabit Network Connection.  I'll look into this (I'm new to VMs, and my predecessor didn't overlap with me to do a hand off, so I'm learning as I go) - thanks!

[alwalters]

I'll check that.  Thank you!

[alwalters]

I tired turning off the firewall, and also making the adapter be a VMXNET 3 adaptor.  Neither are changing the issue.  😞