Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch includes the following:

• Updated HP CIM providers.

• Fixes for the following issues:
  • Virtual machines that use the Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) might stop responding.
  • When diskinfo query is run, VMware Tools installed on Solaris 10.x virtual machines report incorrect virtual disk size information. Also, some Linux virtual machines do not report correct logical volume manager (LVM) partitions.
  • When you power on virtual machines on ESX 3.5 hosts, many inactive VMFS volumes are opened in addition to the VMFS volume on the virtual machines. This might causes the virtual machines to take more time to boot. In a cluster environment, this issue might also cause VMotion operations to time out on the destination host. This fix ensures that only the VMFS volumes on which the virtual machines reside are opened.
  • While performing a host rescan on ESXi, the host and virtual machines might stop responding till the end of the rescan operation. During this time, connections to virtual machines are lost, including SSH, client connections, and communication to other clustered storage modules. The virtual machines start responding after the rescan operation is completed.
  • On Dell PowerEdgeServers 11G installed with ESX 3.5, BCM57710 Mezzanine cards might lose network connectivity to the network switch.
  • When virtual machines are run with older versions of VMware Tools (ESX 3.0.x) on ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 hosts containing bnx2x NICs, the virtual machines might experience a network outage. Messages similar to the following might be logged to /var/log/vmkernel:
    

  [bnx2x_stats_update:4098(vmnic6)]stats not updated for 3 times
  [bnx2x_stats_update:4099(vmnic6)]driver assert
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:597(vmnic6)]begin crash dump -----------------
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:606(vmnic6)]queue[0]: tx_pkt_prod(0) tx_pkt_cons(0) tx_bd_prod(0) >tx_bd_cons(0) *tx_cons_sb(0)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:612(vmnic6)] rx_bd_prod(1fc) rx_bd_cons(0) *rx_bd_cons_sb>(0) rx_comp_prod(202) rx_comp_cons(2) *rx_cons_sb(2)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:620(vmnic6)] rx_sge_prod(0) last_max_sge(0) fp_c_idx(0) >*sb_c_idx(0) fp_u_idx(2) *sb_u_idx(2) bd data(0,0)
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:647(vmnic6)]rx_bd[1f8]=[0:41cccdf0] sw_bd=[0x92ccc90]
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:668(vmnic6)]cqe[1f8]=[0:0:0:0]
  [bnx2x_panic_dump:676(vmnic6)]def_c_idx(35279) def_u_idx(0) def_x_idx(0) def_t_idx(0) > def_att_idx(0) attn_state(0) spq_prod_idx(210)
  bnx2x: begin fw dump (mark 0x800f53c)

  To work around this issue, upgrade the version of VMware Tools in the virtual machines.

  • A NetXen driver issue where the ESX 3.5 host or a virtual machine might lose network connectivity or become unstable when using a NetXen NX2031 device.
  • Excessive cold migration of virtual machines between ESX hosts might cause ESX hosts to be disconnected from vCenter Server due to a memory leak on the host agent (hostd).

Deployment Considerations

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

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.