Update Manager fails to scan an ESX host with error: Unknown failure

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Update Manager fails to scan an ESX host
• When scanning a ESX host using VMware Update Manager, you see the error:

Unknown failure

• The Update Manager logs (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\Update Manager or C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Logs\vmware-vum-server-log4cpp.log) contain errors similar to:

2009-12-01 14:58:16:790 'HostUpdateDepotManager' 2444 INFO] [hostCacheManager, 50] cache location: /tmp/updatecache cache size: 11MB[2009-12-01 14:58:16:790 'HostUpdateDepotManager' 2444 ERROR] [installController, 315] there is no enough space at esx side, required: 294 MB, actual available: 11

• If you run esxupdate from the command line of the host, you see an error similar to:

Encountered error FileIOError:
The error data is:
Filename - None
Message - I/O Error (28) on file : Errno 28 no space left on device
Errno - 10
Description - Unable to create, write or read a file as expected.

update-manager-fails-to-scan update-manager-logs update-manager-patch-repository scanning-esxi-host update-manager-host-scan-fails

Environment

VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

This issue can be caused by a lack of free space available on the ESX host. Update Manager fails because it can no longer perform logging on the host or apply the patch.

To verify the disk space on the ESX host, see Investigating disk space on an ESX host (1003564).