After another hour I figured out I needed to download the Dell Server Update Utility. I downloaded that and figured I could just boot it and update the firmware, well not quite yet. It appears you need to also download a Repository Manager. A what? I don’t want to manage a repository, I expect my hardware vendor to manage it and just offer an ISO which contains all firmware I could possibly need. But anyway, I decided to download the repository manager and just see what I could get done. So I created a repository for the R610 and figured it would be nice to have the Server Update Utility combined with the Patches. So I clicked export and figured it would start exporting, well not quite yet… Dell Repository Manager told me I needed to have a plugin, what the heck give me the plugin… 190MB for a plugin to create an ISO? Are you serious?? I needed to upgrade the system so I downloaded it. After waiting for a couple of minutes I finally managed to start exporting the ISO.

While I was waiting I figured I would boot up my second R610 and try to use the Unified Server Configurator that someone pointed out on twitter. This server was experiencing no issues so update would be fairly simple. I needed to enable System Services through iDRAC before I could use USC though, funny as USC doesn’t seem to use the iDrac network configuration etc. Why not make it part of the normal Bios? But anyway, I booted into USC by pressing F10 when the Dell logo popped up and configured the network. (Click Settings on the left and Network Settings on the right) Next go to “Platform Update” and click “Launch Platform Update”, select the FTP option and you are good to go… After a couple of minutes it asks you if you want to apply the updates, so you click “apply” and wait for a while… (progress bar anyone?) after waiting and waiting it came back with a nice error that my selected repository was corrupt. Yes indeed corrupt, but wasn’t I using the Dell ftp server? Same player shoot again, reboot, same procedure, apply, and waiting… waiting… waiting… I don’t know what I am waiting for, no progress bar or status updates it seems to have just frozen up. After 1.5hrs I gave up and pulled the power cable.

Lets get back to the server that had the issues… It didn’t allow me to use USC as iDRAC fails during boot and I need to enter the iDRAC bios to enable it. So as said I exported the ISO and burned it. It took a while but I finally succeeded. Now for some weird reason this DVD is not bootable, no you need to run it within Linux/Windows first. So I decided to install Windows, but only to find out that the iDRAC firmware update was not included. Weird as I did make sure to select every single component out there, but that is not enough apparently or is it because iDRAC is disabled and if that is the case, why not just tell me that?

Anyway, I had enough for today… after some random tweets about upgrading Dell firmware a Dell representative contacted me. Lets hope he can figure out what is happening and why, I will keep you up to date. If not, well then I will need to buy a couple of HP Servers instead I guess, or just use a whitebox as I don’t need all those components like iDRAC anyway. Before anyone asks, yes I was slightly frustrated when I wrote this.

View Manager Version 4.0.1 | 18 February 2010 | Build: 233023 (View Manager), 210930 (View Composer)

What’s New:

VMware View 4.0.1 is a maintenance release that resolves some known issues in the previous releases. For details, see the Resolved Issues section.

This release includes the following new features.
Localization of VMware View

The View Client and online help for View Client are now available in Japanese, French, German, and simplified Chinese. The View Manager Administration Guide, View Manager Release Notes, Getting Started with VMware View document, View Upgrade Guide, and View Architecture Planning Guide are also available in these languages.
VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5 Support

View Manager 4.0.1 includes support for VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 6 and ESX 3.5 Update 5.
Enhancements to the PCoIP Display Protocol

PCoIP now supports the following features:

• Virtual Printing, which allows end users to use local or network printers from a View desktop without requiring that additional print drivers be installed in the View desktop.
• Single sign-on support for third party providers such as Sentillion and Imprivata.
• View Client supports international keyboards when using PCoIP.

For PCoIP-related bug fixes, see the View Client Resolved Issues section.

Of course multiple issues have been fixed in the maintenance release. For more details read here.

ESX:

• KB 1016291
• KB 1016292
• KB 1016293
• KB 1016294

ESXi:

• KB 1016295
• KB 1016296

We’ve released a new version of ESX 4.0 Update 1 that resolves the issue with the ESX 4.0 Update 1 install failing, timing out and resulting in the host entering an usable state.

The new version is called ESX 4.0 Update 1A.

You can find the new version on VMware Downloads.

For more details, see Due to a possible dead lock on rpmpd, upgrading ESX 4.0 to ESX 4.0 Update 1 can fail or time out and leave the host in an unusable state (1016070).

What’s New?

Notes:

1. Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported. All of these highlighted features are available only if you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 5 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 5. See the ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and VMware Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.
2. VMware recommends VMware Tools upgrade for this version of ESX Server.

The following information provides highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware ESX Server:

Enablement of Intel Xeon Processor 3400 Series – Support for the Intel Xeon processor 3400 series has been added. Support includes Enhanced VMotion capabilities. For additional information on previous processor families supported by Enhanced VMotion, see Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support (KB 1003212).

Driver Update for Broadcom bnx2 Network Controller – The driver for bnx2 controllers has been upgraded to version 1.6.9. This driver supports bootcode upgrade on bnx2 chipsets and requires bmapilnx and lnxfwnx2 tools upgrade from Broadcom. This driver also adds support for Network Controller – Sideband Interface (NC-SI) for SOL (serial over LAN) applicable to Broadcom NetXtreme 5709 and 5716 chipsets.

Driver Update for LSI SCSI and SAS Controllers – The driver for LSI SCSI and SAS controllers is updated to version 2.06.74. This version of the driver is required to provide a better support for shared SAS environments.

Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems – Support for the following guest operating systems has been added specifically for this release:

For more complete information about supported guests included in this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=software.

• Windows 7 Enterprise (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Ultimate (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 7 Home Premium (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Standard Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter Edition (64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 Web Server (64-bit)
• Ubuntu Desktop 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)
• Ubuntu Server 9.04 (32-bit and 64-bit)

Newly Supported Management Agents – See VMware ESX Server Supported Hardware Lifecycle Management Agents for current information on supported management agents.

If your customers are on ESXi/ESX 4.0 and want to update to U1 using the vihostupdate then first they need to read this new KB:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1015879

From here you will see mention of a file VEM-4.0.0-update01.zip which is not on the U1 download page. One useful addition to the KB article would be to remind customers that to obtain this VEM update you need to navigate to: http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/

From here select “VEM” and “4.0.0” and search. You will then see VEM-4.0.0-update01.zip. Copy this to the same folder as your ESXi patch file (ESXi-4.0.0-update01.zip) and then run:

vihostupdate --server <server> --username <uname> --password <passwd> --bundle
ESXi-4.0.0-update01.zip,VEM-4.0.0-update01.zip --bulletin
VEM400-200911014-BG,ESXi400-200911201-UG –install

Let the install run….that’s it.

C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vSphere CLI\bin>vihostupdate.pl --server
192.168.1.1 --bundle C:\Install\U1\ESXi-4.0.0-update01.zip,
C:\Install\U1\VEM-4.0.0-update01-v100.zip --bulletin VEM400-200911014-BG,
ESXi400-200911201-UG --install

Enter username: root

Enter password: vmware

Please wait patch installation is in progress ...

The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

1. HA Cluster Configuration Maximum — HA clusters can now support 160 virtual machines per host in HA Cluster of 8 hosts or less. The maximum number of virtual machines per host in cluster sizes of 9 hosts and above is still 40, allowing a maximum of 1280 Virtual Machines per HA cluster.
2. Enhanced Clustering Support for Microsoft Windows – Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) for Windows 2000 and 2003 and Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering is now supported on an VMware High Availability (HA) and Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster in a limited configuration. HA and DRS functionality can be effectively disabled for individual MSCS virtual machines as opposed to disabling HA and DRS on the entire ESX/ESXi host. Refer to the Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service guide for additional configuration guidelines.

Especially the first is important as many people have been building non DRS-HA clusters solely for MSCS VMs. As of now this is not needed anymore. You can simply disable DRS and HA via the Cluster properties to make sure your MSCS VMs do not move around. I think Update 1 is an important release for everyone running vSphere at this moment.

Of course you View guys were all waiting for Update 1 to drop:

• VMware View 4.0 support – This release adds support for VMware View 4.0, a solution built specifically for delivering desktops as a managed service from the protocol to the platform.

Full ESX 4.0 U1 Release Notes
Full vCenter 4.0 U1 Release Notes

Something else I noticed… The release notes for ESX talk about “vMotion” where the release notes for vCenter talk about “VMotion”. It seems that VMotion is about to be renamed to vMotion.

vCenter Chargeback 1.0.1 | 10/29/2009 | Build 204097

Last Document Update: 10/29/2009

What’s New in this Release

vCenter Chargeback 1.0.1 provides the following new features:

• Support for Windows Authentication
  This release of vCenter Chargeback supports Windows Authentication for SQL Server databases. If you are using SQL Server for the vCenter Chargeback database or for the vCenter Server database, then you can configure the application to use Windows Authentication instead of SQL Authentication.
• New computing resource and billing policies added
  This release of vCenter Chargeback introduces a new computing resource, vCPU, and two new billing policies, vCPU Count and Memory Size and Fixed Cost and vCPU Count and Memory Size. These policies enable you to calculate cost based on the number of virtual CPUs and the amount of memory allocated to the virtual machines.
• Resource Summary section lists rolled-up usage data for all entities
  The Resource Summary section of the chargeback reports show the rolled-up usage data for all the entities.
• Global fixed cost history is retained
  This release of vCenter Chargeback lets you to set different cost values for different time periods on the same global fixed cost. The old values are retained and not overwritten.
• Ability to undo to the most recent operation on the chargeback hierarchy
  The most recent operation on the chargeback hierarchy can be undone. This undo feature is available for entities that are added or moved in the hierarchy. The undo option is not available for rename and delete operations.

Ability to use the vCenter Chargeback APIs
vCenter Chargeback APIs provide an interface to programmatically use the various features of vCenter Chargeback. As an application developer, you can use these APIs to build chargeback applications or integrate vCenter Chargeback with your internal billing systems and compliance policies. Please do note that the APIs released with this version of vCenter Chargeback are only for a technical preview.

Site Recovery Manager 4.0 | 05-October-2009 | Build 192921

Release Note
New Features:

• Full compatibility with vCenter 4.
• Full support for NFS-based arrays.
• Support for shared recovery sites.
  Enables many-to-one pairings of protected sites with a recovery site. For more information, see the technical note Installing, Configuring, and Using Shared Recovery Site Support, which is available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.
• Resilience in the face of vCenter unavailability during a test recovery.
  Placeholder virtual machines can be quickly repaired after the protected site vCenter becomes available again.
• New repair-mode installation features.
  You can run the SRM installer in repair mode if you need to change configuration parameters such as vCenter credentials, database connection information or credentials, and certificate details.
• Graphical interface to advanced settings.
  Eliminates most requirements to edit the XML configuration file
• Support for DB2 as an SRM database server.
• New licensing options.
• Improved scalability.
  A single protection group can now include up to 1000 virtual machines.
• Full Compatibility With DPM (Distributed Power Management)
  SRM recovery plans can now power-on or power-off a host that is in standby mode.
• New Option to dr-ip-customizer Utility
  The dr-ip-customizer utility now logs less verbose diagnostic output by default. To force dr-ip-customizer to log the same level of diagnostic output that it produced in earlier releases, use the -verbose option.
• Change in Certificate Validation
  When you select certificate authentication, the SRM installation validates the certificate you supply before continuing. Certificates signed with an MD5 key are no longer allowed.
• Support for Protecting Fault-Tolerant Virtual Machines.
  SRM can now protect virtual machines that have been configured for fault-tolerant operation. When recovered, these virtual machines lose their fault tolerance, and must be manually reconfigured after recovery to restore fault tolerance.
• Improved context-sensitive Help.
• PDF documents available on release media
  Current versions of the PDF documents for this release are available in the docs folder at the root of the SRM 4.0 CD. Updated versions of these documents may be available at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/srm_pubs.html.

Keep in mind that if you want to do an upgrade you need to use a specific method to be successful. It’s described here. Now go ahead, download it and try it out!

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013013
A vSphere 4.0 VMware High Availability cluster may not failover virtual machines when ESX is configured with certain IP addresses

You experience these symptoms:

• In vCenter 4.0, VMware HA might not failover virtual machines when a host failure occurs.
• When the ESX host’s IP address in a VMware HA enabled cluster is configured with certain IP addresses, the node failure detection algorithm fails.
• You are susceptible to this issue when all of your Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host fall within the following range:
  3.x.x.x – 9.x.x.x
  26.x.x.x – 99.x.x.x

Note: You are not affected if one of Service Console Port(s) or Management Network IP address(s) on your ESX host falls outside of this range.