kb

Issue with Update 1 and COS Agents

Duncan Epping · Nov 26, 2009 ·

I wrote this article after the KB was release but forgot to click “publish”. Those planning to upgrade their vSphere environment to Update 1 please read the following:

KB Article 1016070

Issue
Upgrading ESX 4.0 to 4.0 U1 fails or times out and rebooting the host results in a purple diagnostic screen

Who is affected
Customers using VMware vSphere 4 upgrading to Update 1 with 3rd party management agents running.

To identify whether you have a 3rd party management agent installed:

Log into the ESX host as root.

Run the esxupdate query command.

Anything listed under New packages: may be a 3rd party management agent in the service console.

Note: Consult your hardware vendor documentation for specific package names that are installed in the service console.

Solution

To avoid this issue, prior to the update, disable all 3rd party management agents running on the ESX 4.0.0 server before applying the update.

Note: The 3rd party management agents can be enabled after the upgrade is completed.

If you have already updated the ESX host, do not reboot the ESX host. Open a support request with VMware support. For more information, see How to Submit a Support Request.
WARNING: Rebooting the host means the host has to be reinstalled because it is not recoverable after a reboot.

WARNING: If you have virtual machines running on local storage, they may not be retained if you reinstall ESX 4.0 as a result of this issue. Contact VMware Support for assistance in recovering those virtual machines.

Failed to install the VC agent service

Duncan Epping · May 18, 2009 ·

I just ran into the following issue when I upgraded the customers vCenter Server to 2.5 U4: “”Failed to install the VC agent service” Error Message Appears after VirtualCenter Upgrade”. None of the 3.0.x hosts would connect anymore. Of course the knowledge base provided a simple solution for this known issue. [Read more…] about Failed to install the VC agent service

Valuable KB articles

Duncan Epping · May 2, 2009 ·

Just noticed the highly valuable KB articles. I think the title says more than enough:

The first one will come in handywhen you added a secondary service console and the second one will come in handy when you need to identify LUNs…

Two new patches for ESX(i) 3.5

Duncan Epping · Mar 22, 2009 ·

VMware released two patches on the 20th of March. Both patches are related to an issue with the Broadcom bnx2x driver. If you are running on hardware with a Broadcom NetXtreme II 57710, 57711, or 57711E NICs be sure to look into the patches below:

ESX350-200903412-BG – PATCH – KB 1009232 – General
Updates Kernel Source and VMNIX
ESX350-200903411-BG – PATCH – KB 1009231 – Critical
Updates the bnx2x Driver for Broadcom

Download them now!

VCB and Diskeeper

Duncan Epping · Mar 5, 2009 ·

I just noticed this new KB article:

Diskeeper is a 3rd party defragmentation product that has the ability to defragment unmounted NTFS volumes that are presented to the VMware Consolidated Backup proxy. This means that it can defragment RDM LUNs. Unfortunately, this creates the possibility of inconsistencies in the file system if there is a virtual machine running on that RDM.

The Automatic Defragment option causes the defragmentation to take place.

Consult your Diskeeper documentation to obtain instructions for disabling this feature in the version of the product that is installed on the VCB Proxy server.

Be aware to not use Diskeeper on your VCB proxy!