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August 12 BUG in ESX 3.5 Update 2

PostDateIcon August 11th, 2008 | PostAuthorIcon Author: Rich Brambley

I just ran across this rapidly growing thread in the VMware Community forums. Apparently, the date August 12, 2008 is literally a bug in ESX 3.5 Update 2. If you have already upgraded be prepared to experience the following issues as described at VMware Communities: BIG bug in ESX 3.5 Update 2 – If you’re … (check this thread for the latest as it is updating frequently as of this posting):

The bug:

Starting this morning, we could not power on or VMotion any of our Virtual Machines. The VI Client threw the error “A general system error occurred: Internal Error”.

Further digging lead us to messages like this one in /var/log/vmware/hostd.log, and the log file for any virtual machine we tried to power on or VMotion:

Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| http://msg.License.product.expired This product has expired.
Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| Be sure that your host machine’s date and time are set correctly.
Aug 12 10:40:10.792: vmx| There is a more recent version available at the VMware Web site: “http://www.vmware.com/info?id=4″.

A call to tech support confirmed this as a known problem with a temporary workaround.

The work-around:

Turn off NTP (if you’re using it), and then manually set the date of all ESX 3.5u2 hosts back to 10th of August. This can be done either through the VI Client (Host -> Configuration -> Time Configuration) or by typing date -s “08/10/2008″ at the Service Console command line on the ESX hosts.

As soon as the date was reset to the 10th – problem solved.

So, it sounds like a serious licensing bug has crept into 3.5u2. Further testing shows that the problem begins as soon as the date hits 12th August – 10th is fine, 11th is fine, 12th and the problem appears.

Like a messenger from the future for me here in the United States, Matt in Australia, where it is already August 12th, started this thread. Reading through various replies indicates that several calls to VMware have already been placed and VMware is actively working to determine the resolution. There is even a reply from VMware employee mjlin:

“Dear VMware customers,

We are actively working on rootcausing the problem. Once we know the appropriate action to take here, we’ll provide an update.

Apologies for any inconvenience.

The ESX Product Team”

Tomorrow will be interesting …

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PostCategoryIcon Posted in esx, vmware | PostTagIcon Tags: , , , , , ,
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  • http://projectdream.org Lukas Beeler

    And by that i don’t mean you or anyone else in particular.

  • http://vmetc.com rbrambley

    Lukas,

    True this has been an embarrassing and humbling experience for VMware, but to suggest that Hyper-V is a superior alternative because of a gap in VMware’s regression testing is a stretch in my opinion.

    There will no doubt be irate customers that switch because of emotion. That’s different than recognizing a technical or business advantage. It will be interesting to see where these customers are at in 6 months.

    Maybe VMware has spoiled everyone by having such a good track record with patches and upgrades to date, but now I think that these same irate customers need to look in the mirror and realize they also examine their own change control process for production systems as well.

  • http://vmetc.com Rich

    Lukas,

    True this has been an embarrassing and humbling experience for VMware, but to suggest that Hyper-V is a superior alternative because of a gap in VMware\’s regression testing is a stretch in my opinion.

    There will no doubt be irate customers that switch because of emotion. That\’s different than recognizing a technical or business advantage. It will be interesting to see where these customers are at in 6 months.

    Maybe VMware has spoiled everyone by having such a good track record with patches and upgrades to date, but now I think that these same irate customers need to look in the mirror and realize they also examine their own change control process for production systems as well.

  • http://vmetc.com rbrambley

    Lukas,

    No offense taken. I am a VMware user and advocate and do feel this pain too. I am also open to and constantly evaluating Hyper-V, Citrix Xenserver, Sun xVM, KVM, etc. In some ways I’m counting on guys like you to keep me in the “know” about the alternatives.

    Thanks for reading VM /ETC!

  • http://vmetc.com Rich

    Lukas,

    No offense taken. I am a VMware user and advocate and do feel this pain too. I am also open to and constantly evaluating Hyper-V, Citrix Xenserver, Sun xVM, KVM, etc. In some ways I’m counting on guys like you to keep me in the “know” about the alternatives.

    Thanks for reading VM /ETC!

  • Pingback: DeSchans.org » ESX Update 2 internal error

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