ESX 3.5 Update 2 Released with New Fixes and New Features
Without any official announcement, email, or news release VMware made ESX 3.5 Update 2 available for download on Friday (July 25). I found out about it after checking Planet v12n where I saw that VMBlog.com, Yellow-bricks.com and NTPro.nl had new posts about the release. Update 2 ushers in new features as well as several bug fixes. Check out the new ESX 3.5 VMware Infrastructure 3 Release Notes at VMware’s downloads page. Follow the previous link to read all of the release notes, but the following are some of high lites for me:
- Enhanced VMotion
- VSS Quiescing
- Hot Extend a running VM’s virtual disk
- More SAS array support
- 10Gb iSCSI and NFS support
- Service Console update to RHEL 3.0 U9
- Full support for individual VM HA fail over.
- Live Cloning of VMs
- All patches prior to this release are included
- New VC Alarms
- HA no longer requires DNS resolution (no longer have to manually modify /etc/hosts)
It’s good to see positive and exciting news from VMware (and definitely needed if you have been watching the stock price!) Update 2’s release combined with ESXi 3.5 being available for free download should make next week very intersting.
I’ve copied some details from the release notes about the features listed above in the rest of this post.
The new build numbers are:
- VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2 | 25 JUL 2008 | Build 103908VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 25 JUL 2008 | Build 104263 (English Only Build)
VirtualCenter 2.5 Server Update 2 | 25 JUL 2008 | Build 104215
VMware Infrastructure Client | 25 JUL 2008 | Build 104215VMware Infrastructure Management Installer | 25 JUL 2008 | Build 104265
VirtualCenter Server 2.5 Update 2 | 25 July 2008 | Build 104217
VMware Infrastructure Client | 25 July 2008 | Build 104249
Selecting the Appropriate VMware Infrastructure Management Installer Build
There are two builds of VMware Infrastructure Management Installer available for download. Select one of the following options :
- Build 104263 - Available on the English language page (http://www.vmware.com/download/), this build includes an English only version of the VI Client (Build 104215) that will run in English regardless of the language of the Windows system on which it is installed.
- Build 104265 - Available on the Chinese (http://www.vmware.com/cn/download/), German (http://www.vmware.com/de/download/), and Japanese (http://www.vmware.com/jp/download/) language pages, this build includes a globalized installer that will install an English, Chinese, German, or Japanese version of the VI Client that corresponds to the locale of the current Windows operating system on which it is being installed.
Apparently, to apply all of the updates and activate all of the new features you will have to upgrade VC 2.5, ESX 3.5, and the VI Client.
Note: Not all combinations of VirtualCenter and ESX Server versions are supported and not all of these highlighted features are available unless you are using VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 with ESX Server 3.5 Update 2. See the document ESX Server, VirtualCenter, and VMware Infrastructure Client Compatibility Matrixes for more information on compatibility.
The rest is random cut and pastes. I’ve used RED font for the extra cool new stuff. Be sure to read the full release notes.
Features
- Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware’s memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX, virtual machine density can be maximized with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest degree of ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008.
- Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations by automatically configuring server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter will not permit the addition of hosts which cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster.
- VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes.
- Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks without snapshots opened in persistent mode.
Hardware Enablement and Management:
- SAS arrays – more configurations are supported. See the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
- 10 GbE iSCSI initiator – iSCSI over a 10GbE interface is supported. This support is extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1, ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Embedded and ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Installable as well.
- 10 GbE NFS support – NFS over a 10GbE interface is supported.
- System health monitoring through CIM providers - More Common Information Model (CIM) providers are added for enhanced hardware monitoring, including storage management providers provided by QLogic and Emulex. LSI MegaRAID providers are also included and are supported experimentally.
- CIM SMASH/Server Management API – The VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API provides an interface for developers building CIM-compliant applications to monitor and manage the health of systems. CIM SMASH is now a fully supported interface on ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
- Display of system health information – More system health information is displayed in VI Client for both ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
- Remote CLI – Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) is now supported on ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESX Server 3i. See the Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide for more information.
{OMITTED}
Service Console , driver and library updates
- Service Console Operating System Update - The ESX Server Console operating system has been updated to RHEL 3.0 U9. See the document Updated RPMs and Security Fixes for detailed information.
- Driver updates - The tg3 driver has been updated to version 3.81c. The megaraid_sas driver has been updated to version 00.00.03.19.
- Library update - StoreLib has been updated to version 2.51.
VMware High Availability (HA)
VirtualCenter 2.5 update 2 adds full support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures based on VMware tools heartbeats. This release also extends support for clusters containing mixed combinations of ESX and ESXi hosts, and minimizes previous configuration dependencies on DNS.
VirtualCenter Alarms
VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 extends support for alarms on the overall health of the server by considering the health of each of the individual system components such as memory and power supplies. Alarms can now be configured to trigger when host health degrades.
Live Cloning of Virtual Machines
VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 provides the ability of creating a clone of a powered-on virtual machine without any downtime to the running virtual machine. Therefore, administrators are no longer required to power off a virtual machine in order to create a clone of it.
Plug-in Updates
This release of the VMware Infrastructure 3 software suite also includes:
- An update to VMware Converter Enterprise.For more information, see the VMware Converter Enterprise Update 2 for VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes.
- An update to VMware Update Manager. For more information, see the VMware Update Manager 1.0 Update 2 for VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes.
VMware Infrastructure Client Installer Changes
The VI Client standalone installer (available from ESX Web Access) also allows installation of VI Update Service, which is used for updating and patching ESX Server 3i hosts. The standalone VI Client Installer is now modified to allow optional installation of VI Update Service so as to reduce unnecessary proliferation of this tool. Note that the VirtualCenter Unified Installer (available as part of the VC 2.5 U2 download) will now install VI Update Service whenever the “VI Client” installation option is chosen.
Patches Contained in this Release
This release contains all patches for the ESX Server software that were released prior to the release date of this product. See the ESX Server 3.5 Patches download page or click on the name of a patch for more information on the individual patches.
DNS Resolution Is No Longer a Requirement to Enable VMware High Availability on ESX Server Hosts
- Previously, enabling VMware High Availability required DNS resolution of all ESX Server hosts in a High Availability cluster. This was done using configuring DNS records or by adding all of the host names and IP addresses to the /etc/hosts file on each server.
Starting with the ESX Server 3.5 Update2 release, DNS resolution or /etc/hosts file entries are no longer required to configure High Availability. The host name and IP address information will now be provided by the managing VirtualCenter Server.
July 26th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
[...] reporting this information (at the time of this writing) are David from VMblog.com, Rich from VM /ETC, and Duncan at Yellow Bricks. Rich’s post also highlights in red the features that he finds [...]
July 28th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
[...] VM /ETC’s colorful post [...]
July 28th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Does anyone actually see the 8 Gb Fibre Channel HBAs that are supposedly included now? There are none listed in the I/O guide except the Emulex LP1200x series, and those are specifically noted as 4 Gb only!
July 28th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Stephen,
I haven’t checked the I/O Compatibility Guide myself but I’ll take your word for it. I suspect that VMware has a next revision to that guide that is slated for publication in the near future.
Doing a quick Google search for “8 gb fibre channel hba esx” finds quite a few vendors proclaiming VMware certified adapters ….
http://www.google.com/search?q=8+Gb+Fibre+Channel+HBA+esx&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.google:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
July 28th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
[...] ESX 3.5 Update 2 Released with New Fixes and New Features [...]
July 30th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
[...] was pretty puzzling, but Rich from VM /ETC and Duncan from Yellow Bricks were right - they just hadn’t updated the guide yet (even [...]