Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

upgrade

Upgrading ESX 3.5 to the next version with Update Manager

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In my Lab I was exploring the upgrade possibilities from ESX 3.5 to the next version.  Usually I do a full reinstall just to be absolutely sure there’s no old packages floating around. For testing purposes I decided to do an upgrade of the ESX host. I opened up Update Manager and with a couple simple clicks I upgraded my host to the next version. (I did an upgrade of vCenter and Update Manager before I even started.) I removed a couple of screenshots that didn’t contain much useful info, in total it were 15 steps to create a baseline and update the host:

Create a new Baseline:

[Read more…] about Upgrading ESX 3.5 to the next version with Update Manager

VMware ESX 3.5 Update 3

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A lot of people have been asking for this: When will ESX 3.5 Update 3 be released? Well here’s your answer, download it now.

There are a couple of new things introduced:

  • Increase in vCPU per Core Limit — The limit on vCPUs per core has been raised from 8 (or 11 for VDI workloads) to 20. This change only raises the supported limit but does not include any additional performance optimizations. Raising the limit allows users more flexibility to configure systems based on specific workloads and to get the most advantage from increasingly faster processors. The achievable number of vCPUs per core will depend on the workload and specifics of the hardware. It is expected that most deployments will remain within the previous range of 8-11 vCPUs per core. For more information, see VI3 Performance Best Practices and Benchmarking Guidelines.
  • HP BL495c support — This release adds support for the HP Blade Server BL495c with all Virtual Connect and IO Options allowing 1 or 10Gb connection to the network (upstream) and 1Gb connections only to the servers (downstream).
  • Newly Supported NICs —  This release adds support for the following NICs: 
    • Broadcom 5716 1Gb
    • Broadcom  57710 10Gb Adapters
    • Broadcom 57711 10Gb Adapters at 1Gb speed only

    Note: iSCSI/TOE hardware offloads available with these adapters are not supported by VMware with ESX 3.5.

  • Newly Supported SATA Controllers— This release adds support for the following SATA controllers:
    • Broadcom HT1000 (supported in native SATA mode only with SATA hard drives and Solid State Disk devices)
    • Intel ICH-7 (supported in IDE/ATA mode only with SATA CD/DVD drives)

    Note: Storing VMFS data stores on drives connected to these controllers is not supported

  • Newly Supported Guest Operating Systems — Support for the following Guest Operating Systems have been added by VMware during the ESX 3.5 Update 3 release cycle:
    • Solaris 10 U5
    • Ubuntu 8.04.1
    • RHEL 4.7
  • Internal SAS networked storage controllers — This release adds experimental support for Intel Modular Server MFSYS25 SAS Storage Control Modules (SCMs). For known issues with this platforms and workaround see SAS Link and Port Failovers with the Intel Modular Server Running Update 3 and Later Versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (KB 1007394).
  • Interrupt Coalescing (IC) for Qlogic 4Gb FC HBAs — Introduced in this release, the feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per IO) and improves throughput of IO intensive workloads by generating a single interrupt for a burst of Fibre Channel frames, when received in a short period of time, rather than interrupting the CPU each time a frame is received. The feature is enabled by default.
  • Experimental Support for the VMDK Recovery Tool — This release adds support for the VMDK Recovery tool, a script intended to help customers to recover VMFS/vmdk data stores from accidental deletion of VMFS/vmdk data store or physical disk corruption. For more information, see VMDK Recovery Tool (ESX 3.5 Update 3) ( KB 1007243).
  • Small Footprint CIM Broker —  Updated SFCB to version 1.3.0
  • IBM SAN Volume Controller — SVC is now supported with Fixed Multipathing Policy as well as MRU Multipathing Policy.

I think the most exciting thing is the VMDK Recovery Tool! If I can find the time I will definitely test it!

Queue depth and alike settings lost after an upgrade to ESX 3.5

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I just had a discussion about an upgrade from 3.0.x to 3.5. During that conversation the new HBA drivers that VMware uses came up. After an upgrade it seems that the queue depth settings are lost. Thinking about it I can understand why. ESX 3.5 uses different driver for most HBA’s. For instance Emulex, their driver for the LP11002 used to be the “lpfcdd_732” and now is the “lpfc_740”. After an upgrade the new driver/module doesn’t get the options you provided with “esxcfg-module” because it was specified for that specific “old” module. This means that you have to set these options again!