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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 …

Related Posts

PostCategoryIcon Posted in esx, vmware | PostTagIcon Tags: , , , , , ,
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  • Watch out for updates in this KB

    http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1006716
  • Yup. Hit me too (3:23AM MDT). I'ts gonna be an awesome day at the office today!
  • Joerg Odenwald
    Unfortunately i joined you, too. ;-(
    Are there any solutions yet?
  • shine
    still no update! from VMware.
  • Reggie Hayes
    I found this out after I paniced this morning after working remotely from home thinking I had blew something up. After powering a critical VM down and migrating it over to a server that had not been updated with update 2 it powered right up. I see the ones that are running on update 2 are ok as long as I don't power down. I can see now that I will always keep one host with the previous version online at all times.
  • While it looks like a simple human error (timebomb from betas left in final product), i'll still use this to piss of all the guys that said Hyper-V isn't "Enterprise" ready.

    It clearly shows that even VMware is still cooking with water.
  • Lukas,

    This was a mistake on the part of the ESX product team in the distribution of ESX 3.5 U2. A developmental time bomb was not removed in the hurry to get it to market. Of course, MS is always able to smoothly distribute products that are completely ready for release, right? Do you really want to start that discussion?
  • Rich,

    As i said, it just shows that VMware is not perfect and just cooking with water. It's all about the "high and mighty" attitude of VMware users ;)
  • And by that i don't mean you or anyone else in particular.
  • 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.
  • 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!
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