Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

update

VMware View 4.0.1

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VMware just released a maintenance release for VMware View 4.

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.

VUM and downloading patches via PAC

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When I tried to download patches via a freshly installed VMware vSphere Update Manager today I received the following error:

https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/index.xml;
hosting the patch definitions and patches cannot be reached or has no patch data

Although we configured a proxy including the appropriate account it would not work. As suggested in this KB article I removed the “http://” part of the proxy address but still it bailed out with the error above. After trying several combinations I noticed that the proxy was actually a PAC address instead of a proxy server. A PAC basically serves a list which contains the proxy details of the environment. This comes in handy when you’ve got multiple proxy for redundancy… In this case VMware Update Manager wasn’t fond of the PAC file. When I used the address of the proxy server instead of the host server the PAC file it worked like a charm…

ESX 4.0 Update 1A

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ESX(i) 4 Update 1 has just been re-released:

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).

ESX 3.5 Update 5 is available

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For those still on ESX 3.5 VMware has just released Update 5. Here are the full release notes, you can find the download here and make sure to read which issues have been resolved.

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.