Scanning an ESXi host using vCenter Update Manager causes some virtual machines to fail

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Note: This article describes a specific issue. If you experience all of these symptoms, read other sections in the article. If you experience some but not all of these symptoms, your issue is not related to this article. Search for your symptoms in the Knowledge Base or Open a Support Request.

• Virtual machines containing vua in the name fail scanning an ESXi host.
• An ESXi ISO has been imported into the vCenter Update Manager.
• After the virtual machine fails this event is seen in the vCenter Server events:
  
  vSphere HA restarted this virtual machine
   
• In the /vmfs/volumes/datastore/virtual_machine/vmware.log file for a failed virtual machine, you see this error:
  
  2015-08-27T11:49:59Z[+45.616]| vmx| W110: Caught signal 15 -- tid 3714571 (eip 0x2156d7b8)

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables ma vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCenter Update Manager 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 6.0.x

Cause

During an upgrade scan, a script is uploaded to the host to perform checks and confirm if the upgrade is valid for the host. The logic used to detect the PID of the VMware Update Manager Agent on the ESXi host also reports the PID of any virtual machine with the string vua in its name. After the Upgrade scan completes, it is configured to stop the VMware Update Manager Agent process. However, due to the logic used to detect the PID, this request also stops any virtual machine with the string vua in its name, leaving the virtual machine powered off.

VMware HA detects the virtual machine being halted and then recovers it automatically by powering the virtual machine back on.

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting vCenter Update Manager.

 

To resolve this issue, update the vua-uninst.sh file:

For vCenter Update Manager 5.x:

1. Stop VMware vSphere Update Manager Service. For more information, see Stopping, Starting or Restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.x & above services.
2. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\docroot\vci\vua.
3. Take a backup of the vua-uninst folder.
4. Open the vua-uninst folder.
5. Unzip the file vua-uninst.zip attached to this article.
6. Copy and paste the files vua-uninst.sh and vua-uninst.sig to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\docroot\vci\vua.
7. Start the vCenter Update Manager service.

For vCenter Update Manager 6.0:

1. Stop VMware vSphere Update Manager Service. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server 6.0 services (2109881)
2. Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\docroot\vci\vua.
3. Take a backup of the vua-uninst and vua-uninst6 folder.
4. Open the vua-uninst folder.
5. Unzip the file vua-uninst.zip attached to this article.
6. Copy and paste the files vua-uninst.sh and vua-uninst.sig to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\docroot\vci\vua.
7. Open the vua-uninst6 folder.
8. Copy and paste the files vua-uninst.sh and vua-uninst.sig to C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Infrastructure\Update Manager\docroot\vci\vua.
9. Start the vCenter Update Manager service.

To work around this issue, place the ESXi hosts containing these virtual machines into maintenance mode to evacuate the virtual machines prior to a scan.

To quickly identify if there are affected virtual machine on an ESXi host.

1. Connect to the ESXi host through an SSH session and root credentials. For more information, see Using ESXi Shell in ESXi.
2. Run this command to find virtual machines that contain vua:
   
   ps | grep vua | grep -v grep
   
   For example:
   
   ps | grep vua | grep -v grep
   
   1722535 0 vmm0:testvua
   1722538 1722534 vmx-mks:testvua
   1722539 1722534 vmx-svga:testvua
   1722540 1722534 vmx-vcpu-0:testvua
   
   In this example, a single virtual machine named testvua is affected during a scan.

Additional Information

Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server 6.0 services (2109881)
Using ESXi Shell in ESXi 5.x and 6.x
How to stop, start, or restart vCenter Server 6.x services