Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

• Due to a reset issue with the CD-ROM controller in Harwich and Fox Cove platforms, accessing the CD-ROM from a virtual machine during heavy CPU loads might hang the host.
  
  Under heavy CPU loads, accessing a CD-ROM from a virtual machine might cause the host to stop responding indefinitely. This issue occurs when the ESX Server host runs on the following Intel server systems: SR4850HW4 and SR6850HW4 (Harwich), 4-Processor S7000FC4UR (Fox Cove).
  
  You will notice the following error messages on the server screen if your server has a problem:
  
  hda : status timeout : status=0xd0{Busy}
  hda : status timeout : error=0x00
  hda : ATAPI reset complete
  hda : status timeout : status=0x80{Busy}
  hda : status timeout : error=0x01 IllegalLenghtIndication
  hda : ATAPI reset timeout, status=0X80
  
  After this, the host might be inaccessible.
  
  
• Contains fixes required by Patch ESX350-200802301-BG for a complete resolution of the issues with the bnx2 driver.
  
  See Patch ESX350-200802301-BG for more information on connectivity issues encountered when using the bnx2 driver with Broadcom BCM 5709.

Deployment Considerations

Patch bundle ESX350-200802403-BG must be installed prior to installing this patch. The esxupdate utility will check to ensure this dependency is installed before proceeding with installation of this patch.

Patch Download and Installation

To automatically download and install patches on your ESX Server 3.5 hosts, use the VMware Update Manager. For more information, see the Update Manager Administration Guide at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_vum_10_admin_guide.pdf.

To update ESX Server 3.5 hosts from the command line of the service console, download the most recent patch bundle from http://www.vmware.com/download/vi/vi3_patches_35.html and install it using the esxupdate utility. For more information about using esxupdate, see the ESX Server 3 Patch Management Guide at http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35/vi3_35_25_esxupdate.pdf.