Limitations of VMX Live Patch

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

VMX Live Patch relies on a virtual machine (VM) operation called fast-suspend-resume (FSR) to update VM instances running on the host being patched. Some VMs are not compatible with FSR, and will require manual remediation in order to consume the patched VMX. The live patch process is non-disruptive to all VMs, whether they are compatible with FSR or not.

Incompatible features / configurations include:
- frozen instant clone parents (see Instant clone parents are incompatible with Live Patch. for further details)
- vSphere Fault Tolerance
- DirectPath I/O devices that do not support live migration
- vSphere Pods
- VMs participating in shared-disk clustering configuration

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0 U3

Resolution

If there are VMs that remain non-compliant after a remediation, those VMs can be remediated manually via one of the following options:
- Migrate to a remediated host, if migration is supported
- Power off and on

For vSphere Pods, they can be remediated by draining them from the host.