Malaysia VMware Communities

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:
vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_enter

Tips: How can I check whether ESX host is in maintenance mode.
vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/runtimeinfo | grep inMaintenanceMode | awk ‘{print $3}’

Turn Off Firewall:
esxcfg-firewall -allowOutgoing
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