Remediation Might Fail Through Update Manager

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Remediating an ESX Server host using Update Manager might leave the ESX Server host in a Not Responding state from VirtualCenter and the following error message is reported:

An error occurred while communicating with the remote host.

The remediation process fails with the error:

VMware Update Manager had a failure.

At the end of remediation, Update Manager might also fail to exit maintenance mode for the ESX Server host. The following message is logged:

Unknown Host Error: Failed to exit host from maintenance mode

In this situation, Update Manager might not be able to install the rest of the necessary bundles or packages for a given patch.

If you have created a baseline that includes patch bundle ESX350-200803202-UG, you might also see the following error message logged in hostd.log :

error: Signature mismatch between VmkCtl (May 26 2008 13:34:49) and VMKernel

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

After the remediation process fails, remediation might not be complete. Follow these steps to complete the process:

1. Open a secure shell (SSH) connection to the ESX Server host, and reboot the host (use the reboot command).
2. Return to the VI Client and Update Manager.
3. After the ESX Server host returns and if the host is in maintenance mode, manually exit maintenance mode: right click the ESX Server host and choose Exit Maintenance Mode.
4. After the ESX Server host exits maintenance mode, right click the host and choose Scan for updates. Click yes on the Confirm Scan pop-up window.
5. After the scan is complete, go to the Update Manager tab. The installed patches will be listed under Compliant Updates and all the remaining patches under Not Compliant Updates.
6. Retry the remediation process by right clicking the ESX Server host and choose Remediate. This will complete installing the remaining patches listed under Not Compliant Updates.