Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch includes the following changes for ESX 3.5 Update 3:

• Updates QLogic HBA firmware (4G and 8G) to 4.03.02.
  
  
• Adds a new performance feature, interrupt coalescing with QLogic 4G HBAs. This feature reduces CPU utilization (and CPU cost per I/O) and improves throughput of I/O-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. This feature is enabled by default.

Deployment Considerations

None beyond the required patch bundles and reboot information listed in the table, above.

Patch Download and Installation

See the VMware Update Manager Administration Guide for instructions on using Update Manager to download and install patches to automatically update ESX Server 3.5 hosts.

To update ESX Server 3.5 hosts when not using Update Manager, download the most recent patch bundle from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and install the bundle using esxupdate from the command line of the host. For more information, see the ESX Server 3 Patch Management Guide.