Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

patches

Two new patches for ESX(i) 3.5

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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:

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

Download them now!

SRM Patch released

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VMware just released patch 2 for SRM 1.0 Update 1. It’s a cumulative patch that corrects several problems with 1.o Update 1:

  • a problem that prevents protected virtual machines from following recommended Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) settings when recovering to more than one DRS cluster.
  • a problem observed at sites that support more than seven ESX hosts. If you refresh inventory mappings when connected to such a site, the display becomes unresponsive for up to ten minutes. (This problem was also addressed in Patch 1 for SRM 1.0 Update 1.)

Before you apply the patch please backup both SRM server’s / databases.

VMware vCenter 2.5 Update 4 released today!

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I just noticed that VMware vCenter 2.5 Update 4 has been released. I wanted to say: download it and install, but looking at the attendee numbers most of my readers will probably be at VMworld!

What’s new?

  • Guest Operating System Customization Improvements – VirtualCenter now supports customization of Windows Server 2008 guest operating systems.
  • Performance Overview Charts – VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 introduces the Performance Overview plug-in, which provides a single view of key performance metrics for CPU, memory, disk, and network without having to navigate through multiple charts. The aggregated charts show high-level summaries of resource distribution.
    To install the Performance Overview plug-in, see Installing the Performance Overview Plug-In in VirtualCenter 2.5 Update4 (KB 1008296)

And not totally unimportant Update 4 included two security updates which is why I recommend to take it for a test drive soon and start planning the implementation!

If you get the change install the Performance Overview plugin and email me a screenshot, I don’t think I will have the time today to actually test it…

Patches for 3.5

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VMware just released 9 new patches for ESX 3.5:

  • ESX350-200901401-SG – PATCH – Security – KB 1006651 – Updates VMkernel VMX hostd. But most important fix that this patch containts definitely is: VMware ESX and ESXi 3.5 U3 I/O failure on SAN LUNs, and LUN queue is blocked indefinitely. For a full description of this issue, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008130.
  • ESX350-200901402-SG – PATCH – Security – KB 1006652 – Security Update to ESX Scripts
  • ESX350-200901404-BG – PATCH – Critical – KB 1006654 – Updates VMware Tools
  • ESX350-200901405-BG – PATCH – General – KB 1006655 – Updates VMware-esx-lnxcfg
  • ESX350-200901406-BG – PATCH – General – KB 1006656 – Updates Kernel Source and VMNIX
  • ESX350-200901407-BG – PATCH – General – KB 1006657 – Updates Pegasus
  • ESX350-200901408-BG – PATCH – Critical – KB 1006658 – Updates SATA Drivers
  • ESX350-200901409-SG – PATCH – Security –KB 1006659 – SNMP Security Update
  • ESX350-200901410-SG – PATCH – Security – KB 1006660 – Security Update for libxml2

There’s one “patch” released for ESXi (installable and embedded) 3.5:

  • ESXe350-200901401-O-SG – PATCH – Security – KB 1006661 – KB 1006662 – KB 1007058 – Firmware Update
    If you are using SRM in combination with ESX besure to read the KB1006661 cause this patch contains several fixes related to SRM.

There’s also a whole bunch of 3.0.x patches released, so if you’re still running 3.0.x besure to look into these new patches.

Just before 2008 ends: Patches!

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Just before 2008 ends VMware released a bunch of patches for the 3.0.X release of VMware ESX. 9 Patches, all are “General” patches:

ESX303-200812401-BG: Virtual Machines Stop Responding When Disconnected from Serial Port
ESX303-200812402-BG: Fix for vdf -P Command to Delimit the Output Values With Proper Spacing
 ESX303-200812403-BG: Qlogic iSCSI Driver Allocates Target IDs Greater than 255
ESX303-200812404-BG: Permissions on the Service Console File System Change to Read-Only During Long NetApp Cluster Failover
ESX303-200812405-BG: CHAP Authentication Failure on ESX Server
 ESX303-200812406-BG: Fix for hostd RPM
 ESX303-200812407-BG: Required Patch for IBM FAStT Storage Arrays (DS3000, DS4000, DS5000 families) to Correct an Issue with Failover; Fix for a VMFS Filesystem Issue
ESX303-200812408-BG: QLogic Driver RPMs Versions Mismatch
 ESX303-200812409-BG: Hyperthreading Status Reported Incorrectly on Non-HT Multicore Processors for ESX Server 3.0.3