"The pending transaction requires xxx MB free space" error when installing VIBs
search cancel

"The pending transaction requires xxx MB free space" error when installing VIBs

book

Article ID: 316604

calendar_today

Updated On:

Products

VMware vSphere ESXi VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
In a VMware NSX for vSphere 6.x or ESXi 5.x/6.0 environments, you experience these symptoms:

  • Installing or upgrading NSX and ESXi host VIBs fails
  • In the /var/log/esxupdate.log file on the affected ESXi host, you see entries similar to:

    2016-02-04T12:19:23Z esxupdate: BootBankInstaller.pyc: ERROR: The pending transaction requires xxx MB free space, however the maximum supported size is xxx MB.

    Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Cause

This issue occurs when the bootbank runs out of space on the ESXi host.

Some third-party custom image size is relatively big in size. In addition to the base image, extra VIBs are automatically installed on the environment base on the services used. As a result, if the total size of an image exceeds the maximum size of the bootbank, then the VIB install fails.

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting VMware NSX for vSphere 6.x and ESXi 5.x/6.0 hosts.

Currently, there is no resolution.

To work around this issue, free the additional space on the bootbank by un-installing non-required VIBs on the ESXi host using the esxcli software vib remove -n vib-name command. For more information, see the Remove VIBs from a Host section in the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

For confirmation to remove non-required VIBs from the ESXi host, contact your hardware vendor.

Additional Information

Remediating an ESXi 5.x and 6.0 host fails with the error: There was an error checking file system on altbootbank

"The host returns esxupdate error code:15" error when remediating an ESXi 5.x and 6.x host

This issue may also occurs if you have configured a custom image which exceeds 239MB in size and tries to install it using VUM. In vSphere 6.0, you get a generic error.