VMware have been released VMware vCenter 4.0 Update 2 & VMware vSphere 4.0 Update 2 on 10 June 2010.
Latest version:
vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 (Build 258672)
vSphere Client 4.0 Update 2 (Build 258672)
ESX 4.0 Update 2 (Build 261974)
VMware Tools (Build 261974)
What ‘s new about VMware vCenter 4.0 Update 2:
- Guest Operating System Customization Improvements: vCenter Server now supports customization of the following guest operating systems:
- Windows XP Professional SP2 (x64) serviced by Windows Server 2003 SP2
- SLES 11 (x32 and x64)
- SLES 10 SP3 (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 5.5 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 5.4 Server Platform (x32 and x64)
- RHEL 4.8 Server Platform (x32 and 64)
- Debian 5.0 (x32 and x64)
- Debian 5.0 R1 (x32 and x64)
- Debian 5.0 R2 (x32 and x64)
- Resolved Issues:In addition, this release delivers a number of bug fixes that have been documented in theResolved Issues section.
What ‘s new about VMware vSPhere 4.0 Update 2:
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel Xeon 56xx Series processors.
- Enablement of Fault Tolerance Functionality for Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors without Fault Tolerance. vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables Fault Tolerance functionality for the Intel i3/i5 Clarkdale Series and Intel Xeon 34xx Clarkdale Series processors.
- Enablement of IOMMU Functionality for AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors— vSphere 4.0 Update 1 supports the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors without input/output memory management unit (IOMMU). vSphere 4.0 Update 2 enables IOMMU functionality for the AMD Opteron 61xx and 41xx Series processors.
- Enhancement of the esxtop/resxtop utility— vSphere 4.0 Update 2 includes an enhancement of the performance monitoring utilities, esxtop and resxtop. The esxtop/resxtop utilities now provide visibility into the performance of NFS datastores in that they display the following statistics for NFS datastores: Reads/s, writes/s, MBreads/s,MBwrtn/s, cmds/s, GAVG/s(guest latency).
- Additional Guest Operating System Support— ESX/ESXi 4.0 Update 2 adds support for Ubuntu 10.04. For a complete list of supported guest operating systems with this release, see the VMware Compatibility Guide.
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VMware ESX 4.0 Update 1(Build 208167) was released on 19 Nov 2009 and I did a patch update on 3 of my vSphere Dev Servers included of 1 ESX (build 164009) server and 2 ESXi (build 164009 & 171294) servers on Dell PE2950 today.
The Redhat Linux and Windows 2003 & 2008 Virtual Machines VMware tools upgraded successful and everything look goods after the Update 1 patched.
I would suggest you refer to VMware Communities – vSphere Upgrade and Install forum & “vSphere 4u1 – any issues” thread before apply any VMware vSphere ESX/ESXi Update 1 patches on production environment.
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Using VMware Update Manager is pretty easy for VMware patch update but I would like to share about how to update VMware ESX patch using command line interface here as an alternative way.
First download VMware patch from VMware download web site said for an example:
VMware ESX 3.5 Update 2
Latest Version: 3.5 Update 2 | 8/13/2008 | Build: 110268
Login with your username & password and click YES for agree with VMware Inc. term and condition.
Option 1:
Once completed the VMware patch download, you can either copy the patch source file to Apache or IIS web server and unzip it said http://webserver.malaysiavm.com/esxupdate/
Before continue with VMware ESX host patch, you can vmotion all VMware guest from ESX host 1 to VMware ESX host 2. Connect to VMware ESX host 1 box using SSH,
Enter server maintenance mode:
Tips: How can I check whether ESX host is in maintenance mode.
Turn Off Firewall:
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After couple of months we had performed the patch activities for our ESX hosts and VM guests by using the Update Manager, here is my review of the Update Manager from VMware.
Update Manager had simplified the life of the system engineers who manage the VM farm with the huge number of VM guests and ESX hosts which may require a frequent patch update. Before the Update Manager released, most of the time we had patched the server by using satellite servers, Altiris, SMS and others patching tools. That will require additional cost required to be implemented on the VM guests or ESX host due to the licensing agreement from the vendor.
Update Manager is fully compatible with VMware ESX patches update for ESX 3.0, 3.5 and ESX 3i. From the Host level, you will able to get all the patches downloaded by the update manager schedule task once the VMware had officially release their patch on their official system. Update Manager had also integrated well with Microsoft patches as well as others famous software patches like Red Hat, Adobe and etc. It even allow us to patch the template image which we store for deployment purpose, without manual interaction to convert the template back to virtual machine. If you try to patch a windows 2003 template image, the entire process is fully automated. This is really impressive. I had also patch my DR servers which is 30 miles away from my major Data Center, and we had 30 Mb MPLS across the WAN, it worked perfectly without any issue at all, and of course, the patching timing will be slightly longer due to the location of the DR servers.
To get the update manager deployed in your environment, here are couple of steps you may need to configure before it could fully function.
A dedicated DB for update manager in the SQL or Oracle – Depend on the choice of database servers you are using. This Database will store all the information and patches to be used for patching purpose. If you have proxy server in your environment, you need to configure the proxy address and port number in the virtual center configuration for Update Manager. Schedule task to refresh and check the latest patches release from the official site, recommend to run the schedule task at least once in a week. I do schedule it to be run on weekly basis, to ensure you getting the latest patches when you try to patch you VM guest or ESX host.
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