Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

VMotion might trigger VMware Tools to automatically upgrade. This issue occurs on virtual machines that have the setting for Check and upgrade Tools before each power-on enabled, and the affected virtual machines are moved, using VMotion, to a host with a newer version of VMware-esx-tools.

Symptoms seen without this patch:

• Virtual machines unexpectedly restart during a VMotion migration.
• The guest operating systems might stall (reported on forums).

Important: After patching the ESX host, you need to upgrade VMware Tools in the affected guests that reside on the host; otherwise, the issue will persist.

Deployment Considerations / Known Issues

See "VMware Tools upgrade for Windows fails on ESXi" at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008033.

Patch Download and Installation

The typical way to apply patches to ESXi hosts is through the VMware Update Manager. For details, see the VMware Update Manager Administration Guide.

ESXi hosts can also be updated by downloading the most recent "O" (offline) patch bundle from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and installing the bundle using VMware Infrastructure Update or by using the vihostupdate command through the Remote Command Line Interface (RCLI). For details, see the ESX Server 3i Configuration Guide and the ESX Server 3i Embedded Setup Guide (Chapter 10, Maintaining ESX Server 3i and the VI Client) or the ESX Server 3i Installable Setup Guide (Chapter 11, Maintaining ESX Server 3i and the VI Client).

Note: ESXi hosts do not reboot automatically when you patch with the offline bundle.