Troubleshooting issues where vCenter Update Manager cannot remediate an ESX/ESXi host
search cancel

Troubleshooting issues where vCenter Update Manager cannot remediate an ESX/ESXi host

book

Article ID: 311275

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article guides you through the process of troubleshooting issues when vCenter Update Manager is unable to remediate an ESX/ESXi host. The article helps you eliminate the common causes for your problem by verifying certain configurations and problems that may exist.


Symptoms:
  • Upgrading fails
  • In vCenter Update Manager, you see the error:
Failed to import upgrade. Error was: failed upload 
  • The vmware-vum-server-log4cpp.log (located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\Update Manager or C:\Users\All Users\VMware\VMware Update Manager\Logs) contains errors similar to:

    [2010-02-02 20:40:36:379 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 3456 ERROR] [metadata, 796] Can not read MD5 checksums, error: ios_base::failbit set
    [2010-02-02 20:40:36:379 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 3456 ERROR] [metadata, 834] Cannot process MD5 checksums in cosless upgrade package, error: integrity.fault.HostUpgradeChecksumFailure
    [2010-02-02 20:40:36:379 'HostUpgradeMetadata' 3456 ERROR] [metadata, 894] Integrity verification of upgrade package failed.
  • You cannot connect to the ESX/ESXi host and see the error:

    Unable to connect to the remote server
  • The connection to the vCenter Update Manager server times out.
  • The connection to vCenter Server times out.



Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vCenter Update Manager 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 1.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Update Manager 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable

Resolution

Please validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. Each step will provide instructions or a link to a document, in order to eliminate possible causes and take corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. Do not skip a step.

  1. Verify that you are applying the correct patch bundle and baseline to the ESX/ESXi host. Using an incorrect baseline causes this issue. For more information, see Using the proper upgrade bundle when upgrading an ESX/ESXi 4.x host to a newer version (1020673).

  2. Ensure that name resolution is working correctly between all ESX/ESXi hosts and your vCenter/Update Manager server. For more information, see Identify issues with and setting up name resolution on ESX/ESXi Server (1003735).

  3. Verify that network connectivity exists between the Update Manager server and the ESX//ESXi host you are trying to stage. For more information, see Cannot connect to the remote server when downloading the vCenter Update Manager or Converter plugins (1004887).

  4. A virtual machine that reads as inaccessible can cause Update Manager to fail because it is unable to verify the power status of the virtual machine and therefore cannot put the host into Maintenance Mode. For more information, see Accessing commonalities of an outage affecting multiple virtual machines (1019000).

  5. Verify that your ESX/ESXi host has the required disk space to perform operations on the host. For more information, see Investigating disk space on an ESX or ESXi host (1003564).

  6. Sometimes network capacity can be an issue when communicating with vCenter Update Manager to an ESX/ESXi host, particularly when the host or vCenter Update Manager is across a long distance WAN. For more information, see vCenter pdate Manager host tasks might fail in slow networks (1021050) for more information regarding this issue.

If your problem still exists after trying the steps in this article: