4.1 U1 - It's very quiet in here?

[hutchingsp]

Currently running 4.1 and of course 4.1 U1 is now available.  I don't see many posts on it in here.  Is that because not many people have taken the plunge or because it's "just another update" in vsphere terms i.e. not to be considered quite so major as, say, a Windows Service Pack?

Thanks.

[ThomasMc]

Ah so that's what caused it, thanks for the update Dave. I though those directories had just became corrupt after the install, it also seems to break vm-support and exporting logs via the client but nice to finally know why it's happening

[AureusStone]

It is strange that only some hosts are getting all of these bugs.  I didn't experience any issues.

I did once have a storagelocker link get broken, but that was ESX 4.0 and unrelated to updates.

[Rumple]

I upgraded my entire environment to 4.1U1 with only a few quirks, none of them show stoppers.

Host 1 - esx 4.0 -no issues at all

Host 2 - esxi 4.1 (IBM embedded) - - SSH is listening but I cannot login as root.  Root works from console.  I "Think" this host experienced the issue with the vmotion enterface being disabled upon reboot.

Host 3 - esxi 4.0 (IBM embedded) - I believe this host may have had vmotion disabled...but I can't remember..maybe at next reboot I will check and validate.

The only other quirk I've noticed but I can't figure out is that when I am in putty using the same connections as I've always has defined, pasting special characters into the console through ssh doesn't paste them correctly.

While setting up the Dell MEM one of the commands uses a dash (-).  Pasting from notepad into the ssh console pasted as a dot (.)

I think quotes also did the same thing...haven't figured out what that is about either...

Everything else has been just fine so far outside of that...

EDIT...

damn..as soon as I say that I found another minor issue.  Can't edit template.  again..not a biggie.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102536...

[chossced]

In my case.

VMotion is disabled after reboot on ESXi 4.1U1 "Embedded Edition" ( DELL PowerEdge Server with internal SD Card )

VMotion is still enabled after reboot on ESXi 4.1 U1 "Installable Edition"

Wait and See, ....

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I tried it in the lab over the weekend and couple replicate the problem with ESXi Installable.  My issue was with Embedded (IBM).

[AureusStone]

Yeah I have only updated Embedded on IBM HS22 blades. 

Still haven't found any bugs yet.

[Gabriel_Chapman]

I can confirm issues with the locker dir being removed and the vmotion network not being enabled after reboots. I have an open SR regarding this. Currently it looks like its related to IBM embedded installs as I have 4 new 3960x5s and updated from 260247 to 348481.

Also update errors 10 and 17, and the vmtools images are no longer available. Really weird.

[ThomasMc]

HP ML110 G6s over here and it done it to them all

[ThomasMc]

Its just happened to me again, I repair installed all the hosts to 4.1u1 and double checked everything to make sure there was no issues(and there wasn't) but now the store is gone again, I confirmed that the store was mounted at boot from looking through sysboot.log and it was without any errors and ran VUM scan, generated logs, and messed about with vmtools beofore I signed it off as fixed but now all the above are failing :smileyplain:

[ThomasMc]

An intresting bit from my log

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'usb-storage'

Module usb-storage loaded successfully

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'vfat'

Module vfat loaded successfully

sysboot: Executing 'mount -a'

sysboot: Checking if the 'pxebooting' option is specified on the kernel boot line

sysboot: Executing 'vmkfstools -V'

sysboot: Invalid Primary Boot Bank Detected: /vmfs/volumes/34f290e9-e510916c-438c-17eedaa964c5

sysboot: Checking if the 'pxebooting' option is specified on the kernel boot line

sysboot: Executing 'vmkfstools -V'

sysboot: Invalid Primary Boot Bank Detected: /vmfs/volumes/34f290e9-e510916c-438c-17eedaa964c5

sysboot: Unable to detect USB boot partition. Retrying in 1 seconds

sysboot: Checking if the 'pxebooting' option is specified on the kernel boot line

sysboot: Executing 'vmkfstools -V'

sysboot: Invalid Primary Boot Bank Detected: /vmfs/volumes/34f290e9-e510916c-438c-17eedaa964c5

sysboot: Unable to detect USB boot partition. Retrying in 2 seconds

sysboot: Checking if the 'pxebooting' option is specified on the kernel boot line

sysboot: Executing 'vmkfstools -V'

sysboot: Setting /bootbank to /vmfs/volumes/34f290e9-e510916c-438c-17eedaa964c5

sysboot: Executing 'ln -s /vmfs/volumes/34f290e9-e510916c-438c-17eedaa964c5 /bootbank'

sysboot: Setting /altbootbank to /vmfs/volumes/a2f206ec-1ece952b-3ccc-a6dfc62854cc

sysboot: Executing 'ln -s /vmfs/volumes/a2f206ec-1ece952b-3ccc-a6dfc62854cc /altbootbank'

sysboot: Setting /store to /vmfs/volumes/2da668ef-40e5d96b-90bf-855ddb9c5547

sysboot: Executing 'ln -s /vmfs/volumes/2da668ef-40e5d96b-90bf-855ddb9c5547 /store'

sysboot: Extracting Module: /bootbank/local.tgz

sysboot: Executing 'tar xzf /bootbank/local.tgz -C /'

sysboot: Checking if the 'pxebooting' option is specified on the kernel boot line

sysboot: Executing 'esxcfg-init -A'

sysboot: Executing 'esxcfg-init -V'

Restoring vmkernel uuid

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'mask_path_plugin'

Module mask_path_plugin loaded successfully

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'vaai_filter'

Module vaai_filter loaded successfully

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'vmw_vaaip_emc'

Module vmw_vaaip_emc loaded successfully

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'vmkapiv1_0_0_0_nmp_shim'

Module vmkapiv1_0_0_0_nmp_shim loaded successfully

sysboot: Loading NMP SATP rules

sysboot: Executing 'esxcli nmp boot restore'

sysboot: Executing 'esxcli corestorage claimrule load --claimrule-class=all'

sysboot: Executing 'esxcfg-init -m'

sysboot: Loading VMkernel Module 'vmci'

Module vmci loaded successfully

[ahinterl]

So, I'm not alone with my problems after upgrading to 4.1U1 from 4.1! Portions of the log ("Unable to detect USB boot partition. Retrying in 2 seconds") remind me to what I've seen two weeks ago when one of my ESXi hosts refused to boot completely (and I needed to re-install it from scratch because the last config backup was from v4.1 without the latest U1).

Now I experience the dissappearance of /tmp/scratch (guess I have this on 2 hosts) at some point in time when the hosts run for a while and thus cannot do any UM scans, log bundle exports, config backups without rebooting the host each time before attempting such an operation...

I'd file a support ticket if only the respective site would be functional... So, not only that my ESXi hosts are somehow flawed, the VMware site is too...

PS: I use ESXi "embedded" on my servers, no HDDs, just very small flash drives...

Andreas

[mdippold]

Same problem here on two IBM x3850 M2 with the ESXi 4.1 "embedded hypervisor" usb stick updated to U1.

/tmp/scratch disappears after some time.

[ahinterl]

It's a pity how VMware reacted when I opened a support ticket: Because it's the embedded version, I should contact the server manufacturer, that was what they suggested me. In fact one of my servers has still the "original" pre-installed and thus "accredited" ESXi on it, it's upgraded in steps to 4.1.0.U1, and it shows the same error as my other server, which has the latest ESXi download from VMware freshly installed on it (i.e. no customized ESXi image). From a logical standpoint, VMware's assumption that it's a consequence of some "incompatibility" between ESXi and the server hardware, a missing driver or such, is not correct, at least the one server should work without problems.

For me, after reading about this problem at various places, it's clearly a bug introduced in the latest release. VMware support wasn't helpful, the technicians don't seem to know about the issue. I can only hope that a newer release will have this bug eliminated.

Andreas

[Exwork]

That directly matches my experience, when I ran into this problem upgrading from 4.0 -> 4.1.

We ran into the bug, opened a ticket, and got a run-around from VMware.

I ended up reinstalling all the hosts with an Installable edition from vmware.com, to avoid that run-around in the future.

[ahinterl]

🙂

Same for me: I already ordered a set of HDDs and controllers for my servers just to have a plan B... My hope is still that VMware starts to accept the problem being an issue with the latest release...

Andreas

[Gabriel_Chapman]

Yeah but thats not really a "fix". My support ticket has been open for a month now with almost zero progress on the issue. The odd thing is that it appears to be hitting only IBM machines with the embedded ESXi, at least from what I've heard. The support engineer I spoke with said that he was aware of the problem, but that they had been unable to recreate in their lab.

[Exwork]

Have you also had the problem with using the Installable build direct from VMware?

[ThomasMc]

We use HP here and thats just as bad

[Exwork]

I had this happen on 4.0 -> 4.1, on Dell servers. I *was* able to duplicate it, and sent VMware the exact steps needed to recreate it. At that point, they could have contacted Dell, and worked on the problem without needing to involve me further.

I'd summarize their response like this:

"We don't have Dell servers to test this. Since this is the Embedded edition, please open a support ticket with Dell."

It was obviously more polite then this, but that's the gist of it.

[Gabriel_Chapman]

No. I have 7 hosts, all IBM but 3 clusters of different machine types. The differences are that 4 of the hosts are on HDD and 3 are on embedded. On those 4 with the HDD they were all fresh installs with no upgrades. The issue seems to only be affecting embedded versions. I really don't want to have to go out and buy disks for these systems, kind of defeats the point of having embedded.

The kicker is I can't get support logs direct from the hosts to troubleshoot another network issue I'm having, so I'm having to write to a vMA syslog which I don't believe captures all the relevant information.