I just wanted to point you guys out to the following:
Issue: After attempting to upgrade to VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 3 using the VirtualCenter Update Wizard, and not the VMware Unified Installer, the VirtualCenter service may fail to start. The issue is caused by an incomplete update of the database information for VirtualCenter resulting in incorrect database versioning, which is verified, and required to be correct, by the VirtualCenter service upon startup.
I’m not gonna post the answer to this problem, cause the article might change over the next day and than this info will be outdated and misleading. So check this KB article for more info.
Thanks god. We don’t have this problem.
I don’t remember the last time I was able to perform an in place upgrade of VirtualCenter (maybe back in the VC 1.x series). As VMware integrates more components into VC (Upgrade Manager, Converter, Capacity Analyzer, VIC, etc.), the complexity and chance for failure during an upgrade increases. For this reason and upgrade issues I’ve had in the past, I always uninstall VC and all related components, reboot, and re-install the new version of VC, of course attaching to the database and upgrading that (don’t nuke it!) in the process.
This latest issue is certainly not a deal breaker but in light of recent related release events and the aggregate number of events that have bit them in 2008 and December 2007, VMware really really really needs to snuff these bugs out. The irony is that VC2.5u3 was a bug fix release and not a feature release; it fixed the existing bugs and added a new one. It’s bad press and the competition eats this stuff up.
Jason Boche
Vmware needs to do better testing. In the past you could allways rely on them as being rock solid, but lately things get worse.