The vCenter does not download all expected ESXi versions and/or vendor addon and/or components from the vSphere Update Manager Download Service (UMDS)

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

The UMDS server is configured to use a proxy server.

The UMDS server has been confirmed to have been correctly configured per the relevant documentation.

However the issue described in the title is encountered.

 

On the vSphere client for the vCenter, when reviewing Lifecycle Manager -

- the Image Depot tab is missing some expected files, example: no ESXi version files, some (but not all) vendor addon files and components

- the Updates tab is missing all expected files

- the Settings tab > Administration > Patch Setup > Download Source is correctly configured to use the UMDS server URL

 

On the UMDS server - when the command below is run, errors similar to the below are observed -

vmware-umds -D

YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sss+0000 error vmware-downloadService[xxxxx] [Originator@xxxx sub=httpDownload] [httpDownloadPosix xxx] curl_easy_perform() failed: cURL Error: Timeout was reached, Operation too slow. Less than 1 bytes/sec transferred the last 60 seconds
YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.sss+0000 error vmware-downloadService[xxxxx] [Originator@xxxx sub=Default] [updateDownloaderImpl xxx] File download error: Downloading file: https://dl.broadcom.com/xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/PROD/COMP/ESX_HOST/main/esx/vmw/vmw-ESXi-8.0.3-metadata.zip failed, 0 byte downloaded.

 

On the UMDS server - when the command below is run in the directory that is configured to host the downloads, it is observed that no files larger than a certain size are present (example: nothing larger than 1 MB) -

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 du -bh | sort -n

 

Environment

vSphere 8.x

Cause

The proxy/firewall is blocking downloads larger than a particular size (example: 1 MB) from dl.broadcom.com.

This explains why some, but not all, expected files are not seen in vCenter Lifecycle Management - it is because they are not present on the UMDS server, so cannot be retrieved by the vCenter.

Resolution

Resolve the environmental issue that exists whereby the proxy/firewall is blocking downloads larger than a particular size (example: 1 MB) from dl.broadcom.com.