VMware vSphere 7.0 U3c released

What happened to vSphere 7.0 U3 ?

vSphere 7.0 Update 3 was initially released on October 5, 2021. Shortly after release, there were a number of issues reported by customers, so on November 18, 2021, all ESXi versions 7.0 U3a, U3b, U3c, as well as vCenter 7.0 U3b were withdrawn from VMware’s download area. VMware explains details of the issue in KB 86191.

The main reason was a duplicate driver i40en and i40enu for Intel 10 GBit NICs X710 and X722 in the system. A check on the CLI returns a result quickly. Only one result may be returned here.

esxcli software vib list | grep -i i40
one result good – two results bad 😉

Hosts with both drivers will potentially have HA issues when updating to U3c, as well as issues with NSX.

What’s new with Update 3c ?

On 27 January 2022 ( 28 January 2022 CET) the new Update 3c was released and is available for download. Besides fixing the issues from previous Update 3 versions (KB 86191), the main feature is the fix for the Apache Log4j vulnerability (VMSA-2021-0028.10).

All users and customers who had installed one of the withdrawn updates 3 at an early stage are highly recommended to update to version U3c.

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ESXi Bootmedia – New features in v7 und legacy issues from the past v6.x

With vSphere7 fundamental changes in the structure of the ESXi boot medium were introduced. A fixed partition structure had to give way to a more flexible partitioning. More about this later.

With vSphere 7 Update 3 VMware also brought bad news for those using USB or SDCard flash media as boot devices. Increasing read and write activity led to rapid aging and failure of these types of media, as they were never designed to handle such a heavy load profile. VMware put these media on the red list and the vSphere Client throws warning messages in case such a media is still in use. We will explore how to replace USB or SDCard boot media.

ESXi Boot Medium: Past and Present

In the past, up to version 6.x, the boot medium was rather static. Once the boot process was complete, the medium was no longer important. At most, there was an occasional read request from a VM to the VM Tools directory. Even a medium that broke during operation did not affect the ESXi host. Only a reboot caused problems. For example, it was still possible to backup the current ESXi configuration even if the boot medium was damaged.

Layout of an ESXi Boot media before version 7

Layout of the boot media up to ESXi 6.7

In principle, the structure was nearly always the same: A boot loader of 4 MB size (FAT16), followed by two boot banks of 250 MB each. These contain the compressed kernel modules, which are unpacked and loaded into RAM at system boot. A second boot bank allows a rollback in case of a failed update. This is followed by a “Diagnostic Partition” of 110 MB for small coredumps in case of a PSOD. The Locker or Store partition contains e.g. ISO images with VM tools for all supported guest OS. From here VM tools are mounted into the guest VM. A common source of errors during the tools installation was a damaged or lost locker directory.

The subsequent partitions differ depending on the size and type of the boot media. The second diagnostic partition of 2.5 GB was only created if the boot medium is at least 3.4 GB (4MB + 250MB + 250MB + 110MB + 286MB = 900MB). Together with the 2.5 GB of the second diagnostic partition, this requires 3.4 GB.

A 4 GB scratch partition was created only on media with at least 8.5 GB. It contains information for VMware support. Anything above that was provisioned as VMFS data store. However, scratch and VMFS partition were created only if the media was not USB flash or SDCard storage. In this case, the scratch partition was created in the host’s RAM. With the consequence that in the event of a host crash, all information valuable for support was lost as well.

Structure of the boot media from ESXi 7 onwards

The layout outlined above made it difficult to use large modules or third-party modules. Hence, the design of the boot medium had to be changed fundamentally.

Changes of the partition layout between version 6.x and 7.x

First, the boot partition was increased from 4 MB to 100 MB. The two boot banks were also increased to at least 500 MB. The size is flexible, depending on the total size of the medium. The two diagnostic partitions (Small Core Dump and Large Core Dump), as well as Locker and Scratch have been merged into a common ESX-OSData partition with flexible size between 2.9 GB and 128 GB. Remaining space can be optionally provisioned as VMFS-6 datastore.

There are four different boot media size classes in vSphere 7:

  • 4 GB – 10 GB
  • 10 GB – 32 GB
  • 32 GB – 128 GB
  • > 128 GB
Dynamic partitioning in vSphere 7 depending on media capacity.

The partition sizes shown above are for freshly installed boot media on ESXi 7.0, but what about boot media migrated from version 6.7?

Continue reading “ESXi Bootmedia – New features in v7 und legacy issues from the past v6.x”

ESXi Configuration Restore fails with blank DCUI

Backing up and restoring an ESXi host configuration is a standard procedure that can be used when performing maintenance on the host. Not only host name, IP address and passwords are backed up, but also NIC and vSwitch configuration, Object ID and many other properties. Even after a complete reinstallation of a host, it can recover all the properties of the original installation.

Recently I wanted to reformat the bootdisk of a host in my homelab and had to fresh install ESXi for this. The reboot with the clean installation worked fine and the host got a new IP via DHCP.

Now the original configuration was to be restored via PowerCLI. To do this, first put the host into maintenance mode.

Set-VMhost -VMhost <Host-IP> -State "Maintenance"

Now the host configuration can be retored.

Set-VMHostFirmware -VMHost <Host-IP> -Restore -Sourcepath <Pfad_zum_Konfigfile>

The command prompts for a root login and then automatically reboots. At the end of the boot process, an empty DCUI was welcoming me.

I haven’t seen this before. I was able to log in (with the original password), but all network connections were gone. The management network configuration was also not available for selection (grayed out). The host was both blind and deaf.

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vSphere 7 Update 3 – What’s New

This blogpost was under embargo until 28th of September 2021 8:00am (PT) / 17:00 (CEST). The fact that you can read this now means that vSphere 7 Update 3 has (probably) already been released.

[Update 29th Sept 2021]: Download is not yet available. Maybe we need to wait until VMworld2021 next week.

What’s New

VMware vSphere 7 Update3 comes with a wide range of innovations. They can be categorized into the sections below:

  • Tanzu with Kubernetes
  • Lifecycle, Upgrade and Patching
  • Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning
  • Resource Management
  • Availability & Resiliency
  • Security & Compliance
  • Guest OS and Workloads
  • Storage
  • Networking
  • vSphere Management & APIs

Another bunch of features goes into vSAN. But these features will be covered in an extra post.

Continue reading “vSphere 7 Update 3 – What’s New”