VMware vCenter Update 1a and ESXi 5.0 Build 768111

VMware has released Update 1a for vCenter and important patches for ESXi 5.0 on July 12th 2012.

What's new and fixed in vCenter Update 1a:

• This is the first update that is also available for the vCenter (Linux based) appliance
• For the appliance it switches the embedded DB2 database to VMware's own vPostgres database.
• The problem with excessive memory consumption of the tomcat6 service (KB2013890) has been resolved.
• The problem with HA restarts failing for VMs that were migrated with Storage VMotion (KB2013639) is fixed.
• For a full list of fixes see Release notes.

What's new in the ESXi 5.0 Patch Release ESXi500-201207001:

• Fixes the problem with syslogging stopping when the syslog server becomes unreachable  (KB2003127).
• Fixes the VM autostart feature that was broken in the free version of 5.0 (see my earlier post about this, and the fix announcement of Kyle Gleed)
• For a full list of fixes see KB2019107 and further KB articles that are referenced there.

Here is a link to the full ESXi 5.0 update bundle: ESXi500-201207001.

ESXi 5.0 Update 1 breaks VM Autostarts on free ESXi

In the VMware Communities an issue with ESXi 5.0 Update 1 was reported that is important for everyone who uses the free (VMware vSphere Hypervisor) version of ESXi 5.0:  Apparently VM autostarts do not work anymore after installing Update 1 if the host runs with a free license. The VM autostart function will automatically power on a defined list of VMs in a defined order when the system boots. This is probably used by a lot of people who run standalone ESXi hosts with the free license.

I was able to reproduce this issue in my home lab, and currently there is no workaround or solution. So if you rely on this functionality then you should postpone the installation of Update 1 until a fix for this is released. If you have already installed Update 1 and want to make it undone due to running into this issue then you can roll back to the previous installation (without Update 1) by pressing Shift-R at the ESXi boot prompt.

Update (2012-07-14): VMware has released a patch for ESXi 5.0 on July 12th that fixes this problem.