HOLD ON with patch ESXi 5.5 Update 3B to get updated in our environment. Below are some of the points which you might face in your regular operation tasks
You need to update to latest vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3b version and then update to ESXi 5.5 Update 3b. If we don’t update to vCenter Server 5.5 Update 3b, then you need to enable SSLv3 on ESXi for all services. Enabling SSLv3 on ESXi will cause POODLE vulnerability which is not recommended from security point-of-view
Some of the Points which you might to face on regular operations tasks are as below
1) Attempts to increase the size of a virtual disk on a running virtual machine fail with an error
If you increase the size of a virtual disk when the virtual machine is running, the operation might fail with the following error:
This operation is not supported for this device type.
The failure might occur if you are extending the disk to the size of 2TB or larger. The hot-extend operation supports increasing the disk size to only 2TB or less. SATA virtual disks do not support the hot-extend operation no matter what their size is.
Workaround: Power off the virtual machine to extend the virtual disk to 2TB or larger.
2) ESXi does not get automatically added to vCenter Server inventory
If you update a previous version of vCenter Server and vSphere Update Manager to ESXi to 5.5 Update 3b, then after remediation task, ESXi does not get automatically added to VC inventory. Remediation process never gets completed and ESXi connection status in VC inventory is shown as disconnected.
3) Static routes associated with vmknic interfaces and dynamic IP addresses might fail to appear after reboot
After you reboot the host, static routes that are associated with VMkernel network interface (vmknic) and dynamic IP address might fail to appear.
This issue occurs due to a race condition between DHCP client and restore routes command. The DHCP client might not finish acquiring an IP address for vmknics when the host attempts to restore custom routes during the reboot process. As a result, the gateway might not be set up and the routes are not restored.
4) ESXi hosts with HBA drivers might stop responding when the VMFS heartbeats to the datastores timeout
ESXi hosts with HBA drivers might stop responding when the VMFS heartbeats to the datastores timeout with messages similar to the following:
mem>2014-05-12T13:34:00.639Z cpu8:1416436)VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_issueCommandOnPath:651: Path "vmhba2:C0:T1:L10" (UP) command 0xa3 failed with status Timeout. H:0x5 D:0x0 P:0x0 Possible sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0.2014-05-12T13:34:05.637Z cpu0:33038)VMW_SATP_ALUA: satp_alua_issueCommandOnPath:651: Path "vmhba2:C0:T1:L4" (UP) command 0xa3 failed with status Timeout. H:0x5 D:0x0 P:0x0 Possible sense data: 0x0 0x0 0x0.
This issue occurs with the HBA driver when a high disk I/O on the datastore is connected to the ESXi host and multipathing is enabled at the target level instead of the HBA level.
5) Attempts to perform live storage vMotion of virtual machines with RDM disks might fail
Storage vMotion of virtual machines with RDM disks might fail and virtual machines might be seen in powered off state. Attempts to power on the virtual machine fails with the following error:
Failed to lock the file