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Release Date: FEB 23, 2021

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

Build Details

Download Filename: ESXi650-202102001.zip
Build: 17477841
Download Size: 483.8 MB
md5sum: b7dbadd21929f32b5c7e19c7eb60c5ca
sha1checksum: f13a79ea106e38f41b731c19758a24023c4449ca
Host Reboot Required: Yes
Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required: Yes

Bulletins

Bulletin ID Category Severity
ESXi650-202102401-BG Bugfix Critical
ESXi650-202102402-BG Bugfix Important
ESXi650-202102101-SG Security Important
ESXi650-202102102-SG Security Important
ESXi650-202102103-SG Security Moderate

Rollup Bulletin

This rollup bulletin contains the latest VIBs with all the fixes since the initial release of ESXi 6.5.

Bulletin ID Category Severity
ESXi650-202102001 Bugfix Critical

IMPORTANT: For clusters using VMware vSAN, you must first upgrade the vCenter Server system. Upgrading only ESXi is not supported.
Before an upgrade, always verify in the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix compatible upgrade paths from earlier versions of ESXi, vCenter Server and vSAN to the current version.

Image Profiles

VMware patch and update releases contain general and critical image profiles. Application of the general release image profile applies to new bug fixes.

Image Profile Name
ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-no-tools
ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-standard
ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-no-tools

For more information about the individual bulletins, see the Download Patches page and the Resolved Issues section.

Patch Download and Installation

The typical way to apply patches to ESXi hosts is by using the VMware vSphere Update Manager. For details, see About Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager.

ESXi hosts can be updated by manually downloading the patch ZIP file from the VMware download page and installing the VIB by using the esxcli software vib command. Additionally, the system can be updated by using the image profile and the esxcli software profile command.

For more information, see vSphere Command-Line Interface Concepts and Examples and vSphere Upgrade Guide.

Resolved Issues

The resolved issues are grouped as follows.

ESXi650-202102401-BG
Patch Category Bugfix
Patch Severity Critical
Host Reboot Required Yes
Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required Yes
Affected Hardware N/A
Affected Software N/A
VIBs Included
  • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.157.17299463
  • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.157.17299464
  • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
  • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
PRs Fixed  2571797, 2614876, 2641918, 2649146, 2665433, 2641030, 2643261, 2600691, 2609377, 2663642, 2686646, 2657658, 2610707, 2102346, 2601293, 2678799, 2666929, 2672518, 2677274, 2651994, 2683360, 2634074, 2621142, 2587398, 2649283, 2647832
Related CVE numbers N/A

This patch updates the esx-base, esx-tboot, vsan, and vsanhealth VIBs to resolve the following issues:

  • PR 2571797: Setting a virtual CD/DVD drive to be a client device might cause a virtual machine to power off and get into an invalid state

    If you edit the settings of a running virtual machine to change an existing virtual CD/DVD drive to become a client device, in some cases, the virtual machine powers off and gets into an invalid state. You cannot power on or operate the virtual machine after the failure. In the hostd.log, you see an error such as:
    Expected permission (3) for /dev/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0 not found.

    If the Virtual Device Node is set to SATA(0:0), in the virtual machine configuration file, you see an entry such as:
    sata0:0.fileName = "/vmfs/devices/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0".

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2614876: You might see loss of network connectivity as a result of a physical switch reboot

    The parameter for network teaming failback delay on ESXi hosts, Net.TeamPolicyUpDelay, is currently set at 10 minutes, but in certain environments, a physical switch might take more than 10 minutes to be ready to receive or transmit data after a reboot. As a result, you might see loss of network connectivity.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix increases the Net.TeamPolicyUpDelay parameter to 30 minutes. You can set the parameter by selecting the host in the vCenter System interface and navigating to Configure > System -> Advanced System Settings > Net.TeamPolicyUpDelay. Alternatively, you can use the command esxcfg-advcfg -s <value> Net/TeamPolicyUpDelay.

  • PR 2641918: Virtual machines encryption takes long and ultimately fails with an error

    Virtual machines encryption might take several hours and ultimately fail with the error  The file already exists in the hostd logs. The issue occurs if an orphaned or unused file <VM name>.nvram exists in the VM configuration files. If the virtual machines have an entry such as NVRAM = “nvram” in the .vmx file, the encryption operation creates an encrypted file with the NVRAM file extension, which the system considers a duplicate of the existing orphaned file.

    This issue is resolved in this release. If you already face the issue, manually delete the orphaned .nvram file before encryption.

  • PR 2649146: The vpxa service might intermittently fail due to a malformed string and ESXi hosts lose connectivity to the vCenter Server system

    A malformed UTF-8 string might lead to failure of the vpxa service and cause ESXi hosts to lose connectivity to the vCenter Server system. In the hostd logs, you can see records of a competed vim.SimpleCommand task that indicate the issue:
    hostd.log:34139:2020-09-17T02:38:19.798Z info hostd[3408470] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.TaskManager opID=6ba8e50e-90-60f9 user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Task Completed : haTask--vim.SimpleCommand.Execute-853061619 Status success
    In the vpxa logs, you see messages such as: vpxa.log:7475:2020-09-17T02:38:19.804Z info vpxa[3409126] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=WFU-53423ccc] [Vpxa] Shutting down now

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2665433: If you disable RC4, Active Directory user authentication on ESXi hosts might fail

    If you disable RC4 from your Active Directory configuration, user authentication to ESXi hosts might start to fail with Failed to authenticate user errors.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2641030: Changes in the Distributed Firewall (DFW) filter configuration might cause virtual machines to lose network connectivity

    Any DFW filter reconfiguration activity, such as adding or removing filters, might cause some filters to start dropping packets. As a result, virtual machines lose network connectivity and you need to reset the vmnic, change the port group or reboot the virtual machine to restore traffic. In the output of the summarize-dvfilter command, you see state: IOChain Detaching for the failed filter.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2643261: Virtual machines lose connectivity to other virtual machines and network

    A rare failure of parsing strings in the vSphere Network Appliance (DVFilter) properties of a vSphere Distributed Switch might cause all traffic to and from virtual machines on a given logical switch to fail.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2600691: An ESXi host unexpectedly goes into maintenance mode due to a hardware issue reported by Proactive HA

    If you configure a filter on your vCenter Server system by using the Proactive HA feature to bypass certain health updates, such as to block failure conditions, the filter might not take effect after a restart of the vpxd service. As a result, an ESXi host might unexpectedly go into maintenance mode due to a hardware issue reported by Proactive HA.

    This issue is resolved in this release. 

  • PR 2609377: ESX hosts might fail with a purple diagnostic screen during a DVFilter configuration operation

    Due to a rare race condition, while creating an instance of the DVFilter agent, the agent might receive a routine configuration change message before it is completely set up. The race condition might cause the ESXi host to fail with a purple diagnostic screen. You see an error such as Exception 14 (Page Fault) in the debug logs.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2663642: Virtual machines lose network connectivity after migration operations by using vSphere vMotion

    If the UUID of a virtual machine changes, such as after a migration by using vSphere vMotion, and the virtual machine has a vNIC on an NSX-T managed switch, the VM loses network connectivity. The vNIC cannot reconnect.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2686646: ESXi hosts fail with a purple diagnostic screen displaying a vmkernel error of type Spin count exceeded / Possible deadlock

    ESXi hosts fail with a purple diagnostic screen displaying vmkernel errors such as:
    Panic Details: Crash at xxxx-xx-xx:xx:xx.xxxx on CPU xx running world xxx - HBR[xx.xx.xx.xx]:xxx:xxx
    Panic Message: @BlueScreen: Spin count exceeded - possible deadlock with PCPU 24

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2657658: After upgrade of HPE servers to HPE Integrated Lights-Out 5 (iLO 5) firmware version 2.30, you see memory sensor health alerts

    After upgrading HPE servers, such as HPE ProLiant Gen10 and Gen10 Plus, to iLO 5 firmware version 2.30, in the vSphere Web Client you see memory sensor health alerts. The issue occurs because the hardware health monitoring system does not appropriately decode the Mem_Stat_* sensors when the first LUN is enabled after the upgrade.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2610707: An ESXi host becomes unresponsive and you see an error such as hostd detected to be non-responsive in the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI)

    An ESXi host might lose connectivity to your vCenter Server system and you cannot access the host by either the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. In the DCUI, you see the message ALERT: hostd detected to be non-responsive. The issue occurs due to a memory corruption, happening in the CIM plug-in while fetching sensor data for periodic hardware health checks.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2102346: You might not see NFS datastores using a fault tolerance solution by Nutanix mounted in the vCenter Server after an ESXi host reboot

    You might not see NFS datastores using a fault tolerance solution by Nutanix mounted on the vCenter Server system after an ESXi host reboot. However, you can see the volumes in the ESXi host.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2601293: Operations with stateless ESXi hosts might not pick the expected remote disk for system cache, which causes remediation or compliance issues

    Operations with stateless ESXi hosts, such as storage migration, might not pick the expected remote disk for system cache. For example, you want to keep the new boot LUN as LUN 0, but vSphere Auto Deploy picks LUN 1.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix provides a consistent way to sort the remote disks and always pick the disk with the lowest LUN ID. To make sure you enable the fix, follow these steps:

    1. On the Edit host profile page of the Auto Deploy wizard, select Advanced Configuration Settings > System
    Image Cache Configuration     > System Image Cache Configuration.
    2. In the System Image Cache Profile Settings drop-down menu, select Enable stateless caching on the host.
    3. Edit Arguments for first disk by replacing remote with sortedremote and/or remoteesx with sortedremoteesx.

  • PR 2678799: An ESX host might become unresponsive due to a failure of the hostd service

    A missing NULL check in a vim.VirtualDiskManager.revertToChildDisk operation, triggered by VMware vSphere Replication on virtual disks that do not support this operation, might cause the hostd service to fail. As a result, the ESXi host loses connectivity to the vCenter Server system.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2666929: Hidden portsets, such as pps and DVFilter Coalesce Portset, might become visible after an ESXi upgrade

    In rare occasions, when the hostd service refreshes the networking configuration after an ESXi upgrade, in the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client you might see hidden portsets, such as pps and DVFilter Coalesce Portset, that are not part of the configuration.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2672518: Virtual machine operations on NFS3 datastores might fail due to a file system error

    Virtual machine operations, such as power on and backup, might fail on NFS3 datastores due to a JUKEBOX error returned by the NFS server.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix retries NFS operations in case of a JUKEBOX error.

  • PR 2677274: If the Xorg process fails to restart while an ESXi host exits maintenance mode, the hostd service might become unresponsive

    If the Xorg process fails to restart while an ESXi host exits maintenance mode, the hostd service might become unresponsive as it cannot complete the exit operation.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2651994: A storage outage might cause errors in your environment due to a disk layout issue in virtual machines

    After a brief storage outage, it is possible that upon recovery of the virtual machines, the disk layout is not refreshed and remains incomplete. As a result, you might see errors in your environment. For example, in the View Composer logs in a VMware Horizon environment, you might see a repeating error such as InvalidSnapshotDiskConfiguration.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2683360: If the LACP uplink of a destination ESXi host is down, vSphere vMotion operations might fail

    If you have more than one LAG in your environment and the LACP uplink of a destination ESXi host is down, vSphere vMotion operations might fail with a compatibility error. In the vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client, you might see an error such as:
    # Currently connected network interface 'Network Adapter 1' uses network xxxx', which is not accessible.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2634074: If you change the swap file location of a virtual machine, the virtual machine might become invalid after a hard reset

    If you enable the host-local swap for a standalone ESXi host, or if you change the swap file datastore to another shared storage location while a virtual machine is running, the virtual machine might be terminated and marked as invalid after a hard reset.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2621142: In the vSphere Web Client, you cannot change the log level configuration of the VPXA service after an upgrade of your vCenter Server system

    In the vSphere Web Client, you might not be able to change the log level configuration of the VPXA service on an ESX host due to a missing or invalid Vpx.Vpxa.config.log.level option after an upgrade of your vCenter Server system.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The VPXA service automatically sets a valid value for the Vpx.Vpxa.config.log.level option and exposes it to the vSphere Web Client. 

  • PR 2587398: Virtual machines become unresponsive after power-on, with VMware logo on screen

    If a network adapter is replaced or the network adapter address is changed, Linux virtual machines that use EFI firmware and iPXE to boot from a network, might become unresponsive. For example, the issue occurs when you convert such a virtual machine to a virtual machine template, and then deploy other virtual machines from that template.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2649283: Insufficient heap of a DvFilter agent might cause virtual machine migration by using vSphere vMotion to fail

    The DVFilter agent uses a common heap to allocate space for both its internal structures and buffers, as well as for the temporary allocations used for moving the state of client agents during vSphere vMotion operations.
    In some deployments and scenarios, the filter states can be very large in size and exhaust the heap during vSphere vMotion operations.
    In the vmware.log file, you see an error such as Failed waiting for data. Error bad0014. Out of memory.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • PR 2647832: The Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) fails to print vSAN disk object information for an ESXi host

    The RVC command vsan.disk_object_info might fail to print information for one or more ESXi hosts. The command returns the following error: Server failed to query vSAN objects-on-disk.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

ESXi650-202102402-BG
Patch Category Bugfix
Patch Severity Important
Host Reboot Required Yes
Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required Yes
Affected Hardware N/A
Affected Software N/A
VIBs Included VMW_bootbank_nvme_1.2.2.28-4vmw.650.3.157.17477841
PRs Fixed  2658926
Related CVE numbers N/A

This patch updates the nvme VIB to resolve the following issues:

  • PR 2658926: SSD firmware updates by using third-party tools might fail because the ESXi NVMe drivers do not permit NVMe Opcodes

    The NVMe driver provides a management interface that allows you to build tools to pass through NVMe admin commands. However, the data transfer direction for vendor-specific commands is set to device-to-host. As a result, some vendor-specific write commands cannot complete successfully. For example, a flash command from the Marvell CLI utility fails to flash the firmware of NVMe SSD on an HPE Tinker controller.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

ESXi650-202102101-SG
Patch Category Security
Patch Severity Important
Host Reboot Required Yes
Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required Yes
Affected Hardware N/A
Affected Software N/A
VIBs Included
  • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
  • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.153.17131461
  • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.153.17131452
  • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
PRs Fixed  2686295, 2686296, 2689538
Related CVE numbers CVE-2021-21974

This patch updates the esx-base, esx-tboot, vsan, and vsanhealth VIBs to resolve the following issues:

  • OpenSLP as used in ESXi has a heap-overflow vulnerability. A malicious actor residing within the same network segment as ESXi, who has access to port 427, might trigger the heap-overflow issue in OpenSLP service, resulting in remote code execution. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2021-21974 to this issue. For more information, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2021-0002.

  • Update of the SQLite database

    The SQLite database is updated to version 3.33.0.

  • Update to OpenSSL

    The OpenSSL package is updated to version openssl-1.0.2x.

  • Update to cURL

    The cURL library is updated to 7.72.0.

  • Update to the Python library

    The Python third party library is updated to version 3.5.10.

  • Update to the Network Time Protocol (NTP) daemon

    The NTP daemon is updated to version ntp-4.2.8p15.

ESXi650-202102102-SG
Patch Category Security
Patch Severity Important
Host Reboot Required Yes
Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required Yes
Affected Hardware N/A
Affected Software N/A
VIBs Included VMW_bootbank_net-e1000_8.0.3.1-5vmw.650.3.153.17459147
PRs Fixed  N/A
Related CVE numbers N/A

This patch updates the net-e1000 VIB.

    ESXi650-202102103-SG
    Patch Category Security
    Patch Severity Moderate
    Host Reboot Required No
    Virtual Machine Migration or Shutdown Required No
    Affected Hardware N/A
    Affected Software N/A
    VIBs Included VMware_locker_tools-light_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    PRs Fixed  2687436
    Related CVE numbers N/A

    This patch updates the tools-light VIB to resolve the following issue:

    • The following VMware Tools ISO images are bundled with ESXi 650-202102001:

      • windows.iso: VMware Tools 11.2.1 supports Windows 7 SP1 or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 and later.
      • linux.iso: VMware Tools 10.3.23 ISO image for Linux OS with glibc 2.11 or later.

      The following VMware Tools ISO images are available for download:

      • VMware Tools 10.0.12:
        • winPreVista.iso: for Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows 2003.
        • linuxPreGLibc25.iso: for Linux OS with a glibc version less than 2.5.
      • VMware Tools 11.0.6:
        • windows.iso: for Windows Vista (SP2) and Windows Server 2008 Service Pack 2 (SP2).
      • solaris.iso: VMware Tools image 10.3.10 for Solaris.
      • darwin.iso: Supports Mac OS X versions 10.11 and later.

      Follow the procedures listed in the following documents to download VMware Tools for platforms not bundled with ESXi:

    ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-standard
    Profile Name ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-standard
    Build For build information, see the top of the page.
    Vendor VMware, Inc.
    Release Date February 4, 2021
    Acceptance Level PartnerSupported
    Affected Hardware N/A
    Affected Software N/A
    Affected VIBs
    • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.157.17299463
    • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.157.17299464
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
    • VMW_bootbank_nvme_1.2.2.28-4vmw.650.3.157.17477841
    PRs Fixed 2571797, 2614876, 2641918, 2649146, 2665433, 2641030, 2643261, 2600691, 2609377, 2663642, 2686646, 2657658, 2610707, 2102346, 2601293, 2678799, 2666929, 2672518, 2677274, 2651994, 2683360, 2634074, 2621142, 2587398, 2649283, 2647832, 2658926
    Related CVE numbers N/A
    • This patch updates the following issues:

      • If you edit the settings of a running virtual machine to change an existing virtual CD/DVD drive to become a client device, in some cases, the virtual machine powers off and gets into an invalid state. You cannot power on or operate the virtual machine after the failure. In the hostd.log, you see an error such as:
        Expected permission (3) for /dev/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0 not found.

        If the Virtual Device Node is set to SATA(0:0), in the virtual machine configuration file, you see an entry such as:
        sata0:0.fileName = "/vmfs/devices/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0".

      • The parameter for network teaming failback delay on ESXi hosts, Net.TeamPolicyUpDelay, is currently set at 10 minutes, but in certain environments, a physical switch might take more than 10 minutes to be ready to receive or transmit data after a reboot. As a result, you might see loss of network connectivity.

      • Virtual machines encryption might take several hours and ultimately fail with the error  The file already exists in the hostd logs. The issue occurs if an orphaned or unused file <VM name>.nvram exists in the VM configuration files. If the virtual machines have an entry such as NVRAM = “nvram” in the .vmx file, the encryption operation creates an encrypted file with the NVRAM file extension, which the system considers a duplicate of the existing orphaned file.

      • A malformed UTF-8 string might lead to failure of the vpxa service and cause ESXi hosts to lose connectivity to the vCenter Server system. In the hostd logs, you can see records of a competed vim.SimpleCommand task that indicate the issue:
        hostd.log:34139:2020-09-17T02:38:19.798Z info hostd[3408470] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.TaskManager opID=6ba8e50e-90-60f9 user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Task Completed : haTask--vim.SimpleCommand.Execute-853061619 Status success
        In the vpxa logs, you see messages such as: vpxa.log:7475:2020-09-17T02:38:19.804Z info vpxa[3409126] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=WFU-53423ccc] [Vpxa] Shutting down now

      • If you disable RC4 from your Active Directory configuration, user authentication to ESXi hosts might start to fail with Failed to authenticate user errors.

      • Any DFW filter reconfiguration activity, such as adding or removing filters, might cause some filters to start dropping packets. As a result, virtual machines lose network connectivity and you need to reset the vmnic, change the port group or reboot the virtual machine to restore traffic. In the output of the summarize-dvfilter command, you see state: IOChain Detaching for the failed filter.

      • A rare failure of parsing strings in the vSphere Network Appliance (DVFilter) properties of a vSphere Distributed Switch might cause all traffic to and from virtual machines on a given logical switch to fail.

      • If you configure a filter on your vCenter Server system by using the Proactive HA feature to bypass certain health updates, such as to block failure conditions, the filter might not take effect after a restart of the vpxd service. As a result, an ESXi host might unexpectedly go into maintenance mode due to a hardware issue reported by Proactive HA.

      • Due to a rare race condition, while creating an instance of the DVFilter agent, the agent might receive a routine configuration change message before it is completely set up. The race condition might cause the ESXi host to fail with a purple diagnostic screen. You see an error such as Exception 14 (Page Fault) in the debug logs.

      • If the UUID of a virtual machine changes, such as after a migration by using vSphere vMotion, and the virtual machine has a vNIC on an NSX-T managed switch, the VM loses network connectivity. The vNIC cannot reconnect.

      • ESXi hosts fail with a purple diagnostic screen displaying vmkernel errors such as:
        Panic Details: Crash at xxxx-xx-xx:xx:xx.xxxx on CPU xx running world xxx - HBR[xx.xx.xx.xx]:xxx:xxx
        Panic Message: @BlueScreen: Spin count exceeded - possible deadlock with PCPU 24

      • After upgrading HPE servers, such as HPE ProLiant Gen10 and Gen10 Plus, to iLO 5 firmware version 2.30, in the vSphere Web Client you see memory sensor health alerts. The issue occurs because the hardware health monitoring system does not appropriately decode the Mem_Stat_* sensors when the first LUN is enabled after the upgrade.

      • An ESXi host might lose connectivity to your vCenter Server system and you cannot access the host by either the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. In the DCUI, you see the message ALERT: hostd detected to be non-responsive. The issue occurs due to a memory corruption, happening in the CIM plug-in while fetching sensor data for periodic hardware health checks.

      • You might not see NFS datastores using a fault tolerance solution by Nutanix mounted on the vCenter Server system after an ESXi host reboot. However, you can see the volumes in the ESXi host.

      • Operations with stateless ESXi hosts, such as storage migration, might not pick the expected remote disk for system cache. For example, you want to keep the new boot LUN as LUN 0, but vSphere Auto Deploy picks LUN 1.

      • A missing NULL check in a vim.VirtualDiskManager.revertToChildDisk operation, triggered by VMware vSphere Replication on virtual disks that do not support this operation, might cause the hostd service to fail. As a result, the ESXi host loses connectivity to the vCenter Server system.

      • In rare occasions, when the hostd service refreshes the networking configuration after an ESXi upgrade, in the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client you might see hidden portsets, such as pps and DVFilter Coalesce Portset, that are not part of the configuration.

      • Virtual machine operations, such as power on and backup, might fail on NFS3 datastores due to a JUKEBOX error returned by the NFS server.

      • If the Xorg process fails to restart while an ESXi host exits maintenance mode, the hostd service might become unresponsive as it cannot complete the exit operation.

      • After a brief storage outage, it is possible that upon recovery of the virtual machines, the disk layout is not refreshed and remains incomplete. As a result, you might see errors in your environment. For example, in the View Composer logs in a VMware Horizon environment, you might see a repeating error such as InvalidSnapshotDiskConfiguration.

      • If you have more than one LAG in your environment and the LACP uplink of a destination ESXi host is down, vSphere vMotion operations might fail with a compatibility error. In the vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client, you might see an error such as:
        # Currently connected network interface 'Network Adapter 1' uses network xxxx', which is not accessible.

      • If you enable the host-local swap for a standalone ESXi host, or if you change the swap file datastore to another shared storage location while a virtual machine is running, the virtual machine might be terminated and marked as invalid after a hard reset.

      • In the vSphere Web Client, you might not be able to change the log level configuration of the VPXA service on an ESX host due to a missing or invalid Vpx.Vpxa.config.log.level option after an upgrade of your vCenter Server system.

      • If a network adapter is replaced or the network adapter address is changed, Linux virtual machines that use EFI firmware and iPXE to boot from a network, might become unresponsive. For example, the issue occurs when you convert such a virtual machine to a virtual machine template, and then deploy other virtual machines from that template.

      • The DVFilter agent uses a common heap to allocate space for both its internal structures and buffers, as well as for the temporary allocations used for moving the state of client agents during vSphere vMotion operations.
        In some deployments and scenarios, the filter states can be very large in size and exhaust the heap during vSphere vMotion operations.
        In the vmkernel logs, you see an error such as Failed waiting for data. Error bad0014. Out of memory.

      • The RVC command vsan.disk_object_info might fail to print information for one or more ESXi hosts. The command returns the following error: Server failed to query vSAN objects-on-disk.

      • The NVMe driver provides a management interface that allows you to build tools to pass through NVMe admin commands. However, the data transfer direction for vendor-specific commands is set to device-to-host. As a result, some vendor-specific write commands cannot complete successfully. For example, a flash command from the Marvell CLI utility fails to flash the firmware of NVMe SSD on an HPE Tinker controller.

    ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-no-tools
    Profile Name ESXi-6.5.0-20210204001-no-tools
    Build For build information, see the top of the page.
    Vendor VMware, Inc.
    Release Date February 4, 2021
    Acceptance Level PartnerSupported
    Affected Hardware N/A
    Affected Software N/A
    Affected VIBs
    • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.157.17299463
    • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.157.17299464
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.157.17477841
    • VMW_bootbank_nvme_1.2.2.28-4vmw.650.3.157.17477841
    PRs Fixed 2571797, 2614876, 2641918, 2649146, 2665433, 2641030, 2643261, 2600691, 2609377, 2663642, 2686646, 2657658, 2610707, 2102346, 2601293, 2678799, 2666929, 2672518, 2677274, 2651994, 2683360, 2634074, 2621142, 2587398, 2649283, 2647832, 2658926
    Related CVE numbers N/A
    • This patch updates the following issues:

      • If you edit the settings of a running virtual machine to change an existing virtual CD/DVD drive to become a client device, in some cases, the virtual machine powers off and gets into an invalid state. You cannot power on or operate the virtual machine after the failure. In the hostd.log, you see an error such as:
        Expected permission (3) for /dev/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0 not found.

        If the Virtual Device Node is set to SATA(0:0), in the virtual machine configuration file, you see an entry such as:
        sata0:0.fileName = "/vmfs/devices/cdrom/mpx.vmhba2:C0:T7:L0".

      • The parameter for network teaming failback delay on ESXi hosts, Net.TeamPolicyUpDelay, is currently set at 10 minutes, but in certain environments, a physical switch might take more than 10 minutes to be ready to receive or transmit data after a reboot. As a result, you might see loss of network connectivity.

      • Virtual machines encryption might take several hours and ultimately fail with the error  The file already exists in the hostd logs. The issue occurs if an orphaned or unused file <VM name>.nvram exists in the VM configuration files. If the virtual machines have an entry such as NVRAM = “nvram” in the .vmx file, the encryption operation creates an encrypted file with the NVRAM file extension, which the system considers a duplicate of the existing orphaned file.

      • A malformed UTF-8 string might lead to failure of the vpxa service and cause ESXi hosts to lose connectivity to the vCenter Server system. In the hostd logs, you can see records of a competed vim.SimpleCommand task that indicate the issue:
        hostd.log:34139:2020-09-17T02:38:19.798Z info hostd[3408470] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.TaskManager opID=6ba8e50e-90-60f9 user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Task Completed : haTask--vim.SimpleCommand.Execute-853061619 Status success
        In the vpxa logs, you see messages such as: vpxa.log:7475:2020-09-17T02:38:19.804Z info vpxa[3409126] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=WFU-53423ccc] [Vpxa] Shutting down now

      • If you disable RC4 from your Active Directory configuration, user authentication to ESXi hosts might start to fail with Failed to authenticate user errors.

      • Any DFW filter reconfiguration activity, such as adding or removing filters, might cause some filters to start dropping packets. As a result, virtual machines lose network connectivity and you need to reset the vmnic, change the port group or reboot the virtual machine to restore traffic. In the output of the summarize-dvfilter command, you see state: IOChain Detaching for the failed filter.

      • A rare failure of parsing strings in the vSphere Network Appliance (DVFilter) properties of a vSphere Distributed Switch might cause all traffic to and from virtual machines on a given logical switch to fail.

      • If you configure a filter on your vCenter Server system by using the Proactive HA feature to bypass certain health updates, such as to block failure conditions, the filter might not take effect after a restart of the vpxd service. As a result, an ESXi host might unexpectedly go into maintenance mode due to a hardware issue reported by Proactive HA.

      • Due to a rare race condition, while creating an instance of the DVFilter agent, the agent might receive a routine configuration change message before it is completely set up. The race condition might cause the ESXi host to fail with a purple diagnostic screen. You see an error such as Exception 14 (Page Fault) in the debug logs.

      • If the UUID of a virtual machine changes, such as after a migration by using vSphere vMotion, and the virtual machine has a vNIC on an NSX-T managed switch, the VM loses network connectivity. The vNIC cannot reconnect.

      • ESXi hosts fail with a purple diagnostic screen displaying vmkernel errors such as:
        Panic Details: Crash at xxxx-xx-xx:xx:xx.xxxx on CPU xx running world xxx - HBR[xx.xx.xx.xx]:xxx:xxx
        Panic Message: @BlueScreen: Spin count exceeded - possible deadlock with PCPU 24

      • After upgrading HPE servers, such as HPE ProLiant Gen10 and Gen10 Plus, to iLO 5 firmware version 2.30, in the vSphere Web Client you see memory sensor health alerts. The issue occurs because the hardware health monitoring system does not appropriately decode the Mem_Stat_* sensors when the first LUN is enabled after the upgrade.

      • An ESXi host might lose connectivity to your vCenter Server system and you cannot access the host by either the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client. In the DCUI, you see the message ALERT: hostd detected to be non-responsive. The issue occurs due to a memory corruption, happening in the CIM plug-in while fetching sensor data for periodic hardware health checks.

      • You might not see NFS datastores using a fault tolerance solution by Nutanix mounted on the vCenter Server system after an ESXi host reboot. However, you can see the volumes in the ESXi host.

      • Operations with stateless ESXi hosts, such as storage migration, might not pick the expected remote disk for system cache. For example, you want to keep the new boot LUN as LUN 0, but vSphere Auto Deploy picks LUN 1.

      • A missing NULL check in a vim.VirtualDiskManager.revertToChildDisk operation, triggered by VMware vSphere Replication on virtual disks that do not support this operation, might cause the hostd service to fail. As a result, the ESXi host loses connectivity to the vCenter Server system.

      • In rare occasions, when the hostd service refreshes the networking configuration after an ESXi upgrade, in the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client you might see hidden portsets, such as pps and DVFilter Coalesce Portset, that are not part of the configuration.

      • Virtual machine operations, such as power on and backup, might fail on NFS3 datastores due to a JUKEBOX error returned by the NFS server.

      • If the Xorg process fails to restart while an ESXi host exits maintenance mode, the hostd service might become unresponsive as it cannot complete the exit operation.

      • After a brief storage outage, it is possible that upon recovery of the virtual machines, the disk layout is not refreshed and remains incomplete. As a result, you might see errors in your environment. For example, in the View Composer logs in a VMware Horizon environment, you might see a repeating error such as InvalidSnapshotDiskConfiguration.

      • If you have more than one LAG in your environment and the LACP uplink of a destination ESXi host is down, vSphere vMotion operations might fail with a compatibility error. In the vSphere Web Client or vSphere Client, you might see an error such as:
        # Currently connected network interface 'Network Adapter 1' uses network xxxx', which is not accessible.

      • If you enable the host-local swap for a standalone ESXi host, or if you change the swap file datastore to another shared storage location while a virtual machine is running, the virtual machine might be terminated and marked as invalid after a hard reset.

      • In the vSphere Web Client, you might not be able to change the log level configuration of the VPXA service on an ESX host due to a missing or invalid Vpx.Vpxa.config.log.level option after an upgrade of your vCenter Server system.

      • If a network adapter is replaced or the network adapter address is changed, Linux virtual machines that use EFI firmware and iPXE to boot from a network, might become unresponsive. For example, the issue occurs when you convert such a virtual machine to a virtual machine template, and then deploy other virtual machines from that template.

      • The DVFilter agent uses a common heap to allocate space for both its internal structures and buffers, as well as for the temporary allocations used for moving the state of client agents during vSphere vMotion operations.
        In some deployments and scenarios, the filter states can be very large in size and exhaust the heap during vSphere vMotion operations.
        In the vmkernel logs, you see an error such as Failed waiting for data. Error bad0014. Out of memory.

      • The RVC command vsan.disk_object_info might fail to print information for one or more ESXi hosts. The command returns the following error: Server failed to query vSAN objects-on-disk.

      • The NVMe driver provides a management interface that allows you to build tools to pass through NVMe admin commands. However, the data transfer direction for vendor-specific commands is set to device-to-host. As a result, some vendor-specific write commands cannot complete successfully. For example, a flash command from the Marvell CLI utility fails to flash the firmware of NVMe SSD on an HPE Tinker controller.

    ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-standard
    Profile Name ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-standard
    Build For build information, see the top of the page.
    Vendor VMware, Inc.
    Release Date February 4, 2021
    Acceptance Level PartnerSupported
    Affected Hardware N/A
    Affected Software N/A
    Affected VIBs
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.153.17131461
    • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.153.17131452
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    • VMW_bootbank_net-e1000_8.0.3.1-5vmw.650.3.153.17459147
    • VMware_locker_tools-light_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    PRs Fixed 2686295, 2686296, 2689538, 2687436
    Related CVE numbers CVE-2021-21974
    • This patch updates the following issues:

      • OpenSLP as used in ESXi has a heap-overflow vulnerability. A malicious actor residing within the same network segment as ESXi, who has access to port 427, might trigger the heap-overflow issue in OpenSLP service, resulting in remote code execution. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2021-21974 to this issue. For more information, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2021-0002.

      • The SQLite database is updated to version 3.33.0.

      • The OpenSSL package is updated to version openssl-1.0.2x.

      • The cURL library is updated to 7.72.0.

      • The Python third party library is updated to version 3.5.10.

      • The NTP daemon is updated to version ntp-4.2.8p15.

      • The following VMware Tools ISO images are bundled with ESXi 650-202102001:

    ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-no-tools
    Profile Name ESXi-6.5.0-20210201001s-no-tools
    Build For build information, see the top of the page.
    Vendor VMware, Inc.
    Release Date February 4, 2021
    Acceptance Level PartnerSupported
    Affected Hardware N/A
    Affected Software N/A
    Affected VIBs
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-tboot_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    • VMware_bootbank_vsanhealth_6.5.0-3.153.17131461
    • VMware_bootbank_vsan_6.5.0-3.153.17131452
    • VMware_bootbank_esx-base_6.5.0-3.153.17459147
    • VMW_bootbank_net-e1000_8.0.3.1-5vmw.650.3.153.17459147
    PRs Fixed 2686295, 2686296, 2689538, 2687436
    Related CVE numbers CVE-2021-21974
    • This patch updates the following issues:

      • OpenSLP as used in ESXi has a heap-overflow vulnerability. A malicious actor residing within the same network segment as ESXi, who has access to port 427, might trigger the heap-overflow issue in OpenSLP service, resulting in remote code execution. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the identifier CVE-2021-21974 to this issue. For more information, see VMware Security Advisory VMSA-2021-0002.

      • The SQLite database is updated to version 3.33.0.

      • The OpenSSL package is updated to version openssl-1.0.2x.

      • The cURL library is updated to 7.72.0.

      • The Python third party library is updated to version 3.5.10.

      • The NTP daemon is updated to version ntp-4.2.8p15.

      • The following VMware Tools ISO images are bundled with ESXi 650-202102001:

    Known Issues

    The known issues are grouped as follows.

    Upgrade Issues
    • Upgrades to ESXi 7.x from esxi650-202102001 by using ESXCLI might fail due to a space limitation

      Upgrades to ESXi 7.x from esxi650-202102001 by using the esxcli software profile update or esxcli software profile install ESXCLI commands might fail, because the ESXi bootbank might be less than the size of the image profile. In the ESXi Shell or the PowerCLI shell, you see an error such as:

       [InstallationError]
 The pending transaction requires 244 MB free space, however the maximum supported size is 239 MB.
 Please refer to the log file for more details.

      The issue also occurs when you attempt an ESXi host upgrade by using the ESXCLI commands esxcli software vib update or esxcli software vib install.

      Workaround: You can perform the upgrade in two steps, by using the esxcli software profile update command to update ESXi hosts to ESXi 6.7 Update 1 or later, and then update to 7.x. Alternatively, you can run an upgrade by using an ISO image and the vSphere Lifecycle Manager.

    Known Issues from Previous Releases

    To view a list of previous known issues, click here.

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