Some not so good news for HP Customers
Well, if you have been following my blog for the last couple of days – you will know that I’ve been upgrading to vSphere 4.0 U1. Just before I did it came to my attention that the upgrade process triggered via VMware Update Manager had an issue. This surfaced during the US Thanksgiving holiday period – so I treated as defcon 1 issue – because the upgrade could cause a PSOD – and I worried this problem could be caused by someone doing an upgrade during the holiday period – or it slipping over their radar during the holiday period.
In case you don’t know – if you have ESX “Classic” with the HP SIM Agents installed (which is very popular) then the VMware VUM Update would cause you problems. VMware hastily issues an KB article -
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1016070
outlining the problem, the cause and work around….
Leaving aside about HOW such an important upgrade error wasn’t picked up by the internal VMware QA process – this KB has been recently updated, and it makes for uncomfortable reading for HP customers:
“Note: If you want to install the update, you must download the update manually. The update is no longer available for automatic download in Update Manager and the vSphere Update Utility. You can find the update on the VMware Downloads site and copy the download to your local depot as needed.”
So those of us lucky/unlucky enough to download the patches and U1 last week – get to do automated downloaded update via VUM, and those who do it now – will find that the update is not distributed through normal sources.
Now I’m going to be VERY generous to VMware, by saying it probably better to withdraw an update that comes with a known-issue – but I don’t think many customers will view it that way. I think most customer will conclude that there has to be better way of handling this problem? They will see that the way this issue had been created and handled – is yet another reminder that rolling out updates early is unwise – and that like other vendors automatic patch-management – it can’t be trusted.
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December 1st, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Mike –
Great post. But you don’t place any \blame,\ so to speak, on HP. It seems to me that many issues with ESX stem from HP Insight Agents. It also seems to me that HP issues a \fixed\ version and two different things are broken.
I work for company that is a VMware and an HP partner. I spend a lot of time installing HP servers with VMware. I usually recommend ESXi unless there is a compelling reason to use the \Classic\ version, like the older version of Lab Manager or something similar to that. If a reason came up to make the \Classic\ version necessary, I would always hesitate to install the agents because they always seem to cause troubles.
This is all just my opinion, but I think both VMware AND HP need to do a little more homework before releasing updates.
Dave
December 1st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Yes, I guess in a way your right. We could blame both parties. Although you would assume that as the owner of the update 1 code, it would be VMware due diligence to test it against different builds. Additionally, it is there process VUM which has be trigger of the problem – and I think merely withdrawing the update for HP customers isn’t a good resolution per se – although I can see a PSOD is even less desirable. But I think your right – it could be regarded as a failing on both HP & VMware’s side.
As for ESXi. Yes, its great. But not all customer can and will move until they are forced…
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:03 pm
I assume the HP agents in question are 8.2.5, correct?
December 2nd, 2009 at 5:14 pm
I didn’t get the impression that the problem was with a specific agent version – just any HP Insight SIM would cause a problem….
January 18th, 2010 at 1:44 pm
Is this problem solved now?
January 19th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
It looks like a patch has been issued – and there are new kb articles…
http://www.vmware.com/support/
Basically, there’s a patch to be applied to ESXi 4.0 before you then upgrade to ESXi 4.0 Update1:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1016262
and http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1016070 explains that Update1a has been released to address the issues described…