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reported by customers, so on November 18, 2021, all ESXi versions 7.0 U3a, U3b, U3c, as well as vCenter 7.0 U3b were withdrawn from VMware’s download area.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All users and customers who had installed one of the withdrawn updates 3 at an early stage are highly recommended to update to version U3c.

5. December 20209. January 2021

NSX-T Update Procedure

On October 20th 2020 VMware released NSX-T version 3.1 (release notes).

Upgrade from version 3.0

I’ll outline the process of upgrading from version 3.0.x to version 3.1. In the example shown, a base version 3.0.2 is upgraded, but the process is the same for all versions from 3.0.

Requirements

We’ll need an upgrade bundle (MUB) from VMware download site (login required).

Upgrade

First we need to login to NSX-T Manager. Go to section Lifecycle Management and select Upgrade. You’ll see your current version on the right. Start the process with Upgrade NSX.

31. December 2018

Upgrade ESXi 6.5 with Fujitsu Custom Image

VIB Conflict

Host upgrades with custom images offer extended driver support for vendor specific hardware or agents. You’ll get drivers that are not included in a standard VMware (Vanilla) image. Upgrading with customized images may lead into trouble while updating existing driver packages. There used to be a nasty bug with the lsiprovider package on Fujitsu ESXi 5.1 images. Another example was the “death by upgrade” bug (blog post in German) when upgrading a customized Fujitsu installation to ESXi 6.0. There are other examples from different vendors in the hall of shame.

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