Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch fixes the following issues:

• Fixes an issue where a guest operating system's memory usage might be overestimated on Intel systems that support EPT technology or AMD systems that support RVI technology. This issue might cause the memory alarms in vCenter to go off spuriously even if the guest is not actively accessing a lot of memory.
• Fixes an issue where DVFilter API's fail for particular message types during message reordering.
• Fixes an issue where DVfilter socket reads might fail if zero bytes are returned due to a connection close.
• Fixes an issue with a DVFilter API where ESXi might fail if a guest operating system is moved from one vswitch port to another. This fix allows dropping frames which are accidentally or maliciously posted to a different portset.
• Fixes an issue where incorrect SysAlert() messages might be displayed on certain systems if the number of cache colors is not calculated correctly.
• Fixes an issue with monitor or vmkernel crashing when running certain guest operating systems with a 32-bit monitor running in binary translation mode.
• When virtual machines are run with older versions of VMware Tools (ESX 3.0.x) on ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 hosts containing bnx2x NICs, the virtual machines might experience a network outage. Messages similar to the following might be displayed in /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.
• Fixes an issue in the bnx2x driver that might cause a network outage if you change the maximium tranmission unit (MTU) value on a Broadcom Netxtreme II 10gig NIC.
• Fixes an issue where unloading the bnx2x driver might cause the host to reboot.
• Fixes an issue where a vSphere ESXi Host that has NIC teaming configured with the ixgbe driver for the physical NICs might fail if one of the physical NICs goes down.
• Fixes an issue with esxtop utility where esxtop might quit with the error message "VMEsxtop_GrpStatsInit() failed" when attempting to monitor network status on ESXi.
• A virtual machine might fail after the Storage Port controller is reset on ESXi hosts that have the HPSA driver connected to an SAS array.
• Fixes an issue where hosts cannot detect more than 2 HPSA controllers due to the limited driver heap size. This patch includes a fix that increases the driver heap, which allows the host to use more than 2 HP Storage Array HBAs.
  

Deployment Considerations

BEFORE INSTALLING THIS PATCH: If you have set Mem.AllocGuestLargePage to 0 to workaround the high memory usage issue detailed in the Summaries and Symptoms section, undo the workaround by setting Mem.AllocGuestLargePage to 1.

Patch Download and Installation

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

ESXi hosts can also be updated using vSphere Host Update Utility or by manually downloading the patch zip file from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and installing the bulletin by using the vihostupdate command through the vSphere CLI. For details, see the vSphere CLI Installation and Reference Guide and the vSphere Upgrade Guide.