Baseline check compliance fails on 7.0 GA host in a 8.0.x vCenter

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Baseline check compliance scan entity task fails on 7.0 GA host with error "The host returns esxupdate error codes: -1. Check the Lifecycle Manager log files and esxupdate log files for more details"

The host esxupdate.log contains error like:

YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z esxupdate: 3081767: esxupdate: ERROR: File "/build/mts/release/bora-15843807/bora/build/esx/release/vmvisor/esxupdate/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/vmware/esximage/Utils/Misc.py", line 26, in <listcomp>
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z esxupdate: 3081767: esxupdate: ERROR: MemoryError

OR

YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SSZ esxupdate: 3081767: esxupdate: ERROR: vmware.runcommand.RunCommandError: Error running command '['/sbin/smbiosDump']': [Errno 12] Cannot allocate memory

vmkernel.log contains error like:

YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)Admission failure in path: host/vim/vmvisor/esxupdate/python.3081767:uw.3081767
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)UserWorld 'python' with cmdline '/usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/esxupdate --HA'
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)uw.3081767 (6513796) extraMin/extraFromParent: 1492/1492, python.3081767 (6513793) childEmin/eMinLimit: 62701/64000
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)Admission failure in path: host/vim/vmvisor/esxupdate/python.3081767:uw.3081767
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)UserWorld 'python' with cmdline '/usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/esxupdate --HA'
YYYY-MM-DD T HH:MM:SS Z cpu15:3081767)uw.3081767 (6513796) extraMin/extraFromParent: 1492/1492, python.3081767 (6513793) childEmin/eMinLimit: 62538/64000

Cause

On 7.0 GA host, the "esxupdate" memory resource pool used for baseline check compliance is too small to handle all ESXi patches/updates that have been released to date

Resolution

The issue is not seen on ESXi hosts running 7.0 U1 and later due to increased memory allocation

Options for upgrading the ESXi hosts:

1. Upgrade the ESXi host via the ESXCLI method

2. Use vLCM ISO upgrade baseline to upgrade the ESXi host to a later version

3. Least recommended option - Revert vCenter back to the 7.0 release line and perform patching first to upgrade the host to a later 7.0 version