vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l |  NOV 19 2020 | ISO Build 17138064

vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 Update 3l |  NOV 19 2020 | ISO Build 17138064

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's in the Release Notes

The release notes cover the following topics:

What's New

Earlier Releases of vCenter Server 6.7

Features and known issues of vCenter Server are described in the release notes for each release. Release notes for earlier releases of vCenter Server 6.7 are:

For internationalization, compatibility, installation and upgrade, open source components and product support notices see the VMware vCenter Sever 6.7 Update 1 Release Notes.

Upgrade Notes for This Release

For more information on vCenter Server versions that support upgrade to vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l, refer to VMware knowledge base article 67077.

Patches Contained in This Release

This release of vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l delivers the following patch. See the VMware Patch Download Center for more information on downloading patches.

NOTE: vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l does not provide a security patch to update the JRE component of vCenter Server for Windows and Platform Services Controller for Windows. Instead, you must download the VMware-VIM-all-6.7.0-17138064.iso file from vmware.com.

Full Patch for VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7 Update 3l

Product Patch for vCenter Server Appliance containing VMware software fixes, security fixes, and third-party product fixes (for example, JRE and tcServer).

This patch is applicable to the vCenter Server Appliance and Platform Services Controller Appliance.

For vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller Appliances

Download Filename VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.7.0.46000-17138064-patch-FP.iso
Build 17138064
Download Size 2036.5 MB
md5sum ab19396390f47a344104a30f22015ca5
sha1checksum a56a252d2a4ec806c0f9a8f764e478503f815d4e

Download and Installation

You can download this patch by going to the VMware Patch Download Center and selecting VC from the Select a Product drop-down menu.

  1. Attach the VMware-vCenter-Server-Appliance-6.7.0.46000-17138064-patch-FP.iso file to the vCenter Server Appliance CD or DVD drive.
  2. Log in to the appliance shell as a user with super administrative privileges (for example, root) and run the following commands:
    • To stage the ISO:
      software-packages stage --iso
    • To see the staged content:
      software-packages list --staged
    • To install the staged rpms:
      software-packages install --staged

For more information on using the vCenter Server Appliance shells, see VMware knowledge base article 2100508.

For more information on patching the vCenter Server Appliance, see Patching the vCenter Server Appliance.

For more information on staging patches, see Stage Patches to vCenter Server Appliance.

For more information on installing patches, see Install vCenter Server Appliance Patches.

For issues resolved in this patch see Resolved Issues.

For Photon OS updates, see VMware vCenter Server Appliance Photon OS Security Patches

For more information on patching using the Appliance Management Interface, see Patching the vCenter Server Appliance by Using the Appliance Management Interface.
 

Resolved Issues

The resolved issues are grouped as follows.

Security Issues
    • Update to XMLTooling

      The XMLTooling library is updated to version 1.4.6.

    • Update to JRE

      Oracle (Sun) JRE is updated to version 1.8.0.261.

    • Update to the Apache Tomcat server

      The Apache Tomcat server is updated to versions 8.5.57.

    • Update to the Jackson package

      The Jackson package is updated to versions 2.10.5.

    • Update to Eclipse Jetty

      Eclipse Jetty is updated to version 9.4.31.v20200723.

    • Update to the Spring Framework

      The Spring Framework is updated to version 4.3.29.

    • Update to VMware PostgreSQL

      VMware PostgreSQL is updated to version 9.6.19.

    • Update to cURL

      cURL in the vCenter Server Appliance is updated to 7.72.0.

    • Update to the SQLite database

      The SQLite database is updated to version 3.33.0.

    • Update to OpenSSL library

      The OpenSSL library is updated to version openssl-1.0.2w.

    • Update to the Apache HTTP Server (httpd)

      Httpd is updated to version 2.4.46.

  • You can reset a vCenter Server system root password with an expired password

    You can reset a vCenter Server system root password with an expired password, although you must not be able to use any of the last 5 passwords.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix adds complexity to the password and prevents the use of expired passwords.

Networking Issues
  • You cannot detect uncorrected networking errors and take necessary corrective action

    vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l adds five physical NIC statistics, droppedRx, droppedTx, errorsRx, RxCRCErrors and errorsTx, to the hostd.log file at /var/run/log/hostd.log to enable you detect uncorrected networking errors and take necessary corrective action.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

vSphere HA and Fault Tolerance Issues
  • Changes to local user accounts and the root account password are not synced between vCenter Server High Availability nodes

    In a vCenter Server High Availability environment, creating or modifying local user accounts, or updating the root account password, might not be replicated to the passive node.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • A vCenter Server system unexpectedly powers off without a backtrace

    A vCenter Server system might unexpectedly power off when a thread of the VMware Service Lifecycle Manager service becomes unresponsive due to a system failure or when a process failure, such as a disk I/O error, occurs. However, the VMware Service Lifecycle Manager does not log a specific message for the failure.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix enables a reboot instead of a shutdown of the vCenter Server system in case of a system or process failure to make sure you can review logs for the root cause after the reboot.

Miscellaneous Issues
  • The SNMP agent might intermittently stop responding and you lose system monitoring

    A rare memory leak condition might cause the SNMP agent to stop responding and fail to restart. As a result, you lose system monitoring.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • ESXi host loses connectivity to a vCenter Server system and cannot reconnect

    An ESXi host might intermittently lose connectivity to a vCenter Server system and fail to reconnect. In the/var/log/vmkwarning.log file you can see a message similar to:
    2020-08-01T09:05:00.648Z cpu44:2715061)WARNING: Heap: 3855: Could not allocate 2621440 bytes for dynamic heap userRes-1. Request returned Admission check failed for memory resource.

    This issue occurs when vSphere DRS reserves all memory of the virtual machines on the host. As a result, the ESXi host cannot create new threads and processes, which in turn causes the hostd or vpxa services to fail and make the host unresponsive to the vCenter Sever system, or completely disconnecting it.

    This issue is resolved in this release. The fix makes sure that DRS always leaves sufficient memory on the ESXi host to support the hostd or vpxa services.

Install and Upgrade Issues
  • In the Virtual Appliance Management Infrastructure user interface, you do not see the updated version after patching your vCenter Server system

    If you use the option Stage and Install to patch your vCenter Server system without unstaging the previous version first, you still see the previous version in the Virtual Appliance Management Infrastructure. The patch completes successfully and in the vCenter Client, and the vpxd logs, the version is correct.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • In the Virtual Appliance Management Interface, you see vCenter Server 7.0 Update 1 as an option for update along with 6.7.x release builds

    In the Virtual Appliance Management Interface on a vCenter Sever 6.7.x system, along with 6.7.x releases, you can also see vCenter Server 7.0 Update 1 (7.0.1), as an available update. However, vCenter Server 7.0 Update 1 is a major upgrade path and should not list among 6.7.x release builds as a minor update path.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

Virtual Machine Management Issues
  • If you have .vswp swap files in a virtual machine directory, you see Device or resource busy error messages when scanning all files in the directory

    If you have .vswp swap files in a virtual machine directory, you see Device or resource busy error messages when scanning all files in the directory. You also see extra I/O flow on vSAN namespace objects and a slow down in the hostd service.
    The issue occurs if you attempt to open a file with .vswp extension as an object descriptor. The swap files of the VMX process and the virtual machine main memory have the same extension .vswp, but the swap files of the VMX process must not be opened as object descriptors.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

  • The vpxd service might fail while load balancing virtual machines on a vSphere DRS enabled cluster

    If you set the TryBalanceVmsPerHost advanced option in vSphere DRS to 1, the vpxd service might fail and you need to restart it. The issue occurs when virtual machines are unevenly distributed across ESXi hosts in a cluster and 2 hosts within that cluster have identical entitlements.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

Server Configuration Issues
  • The vmware-statsmonitor service fails to start after a system reboot

    If the Stats DB in your environment is large, the time for consistency checks might exceed the start timeout limit of the vmware-statsmonitor service. As a result, the vmware-statsmonitor service fails to start after a system reboot.

    This issue is resolved in this release.

vMotion Issues
  • When you migrate virtual machines to a vCenter Server that does not support the source EVC mode, the operation fails, and the target vCenter Server machine fails

    When you migrate a virtual machine from an EVC cluster by using vSphere vMotion, the operation might fail under the following conditions:

    • the virtual machine is compatible with ESX 5.0 or earlier (hardware version 8 or earlier)
    • the source vCenter Server is of newer version than the target vCenter Server, and the target vCenter Server does not support the source EVC cluster mode.

    The target vCenter Server machine fails as well. 

    This issue is resolved in this release.

Known Issues

The known issues are grouped as follows.

Install and Upgrade Issues
  • NEW: After an upgrade to vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l and later, you might see existing or new HPE VASA providers in disconnected state

    If the inventory of your vCenter Server system has vSphere Virtual Volumes supported by either of HPE 3PAR StoreServ or HPE Primera VASA providers, you might see the providers get into a disconnected state after an upgrade to vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l or later. The issue affects 3PAR 3.3.1 MU5 storage, but not 3PAR 3.3.1 MU3 storage. 

    Workaround: Upgrade to vCenter Server 7.0 Update 1c and later. For upgrade compatibility, see VMware knowledge base article 67077. Alternatively, you can restore your system to a backup prior to vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l.
    If you are not already using HPE 3PAR 3.3.1 MU5 VASA provider, postpone the VASA provider upgrade to HPE 3PAR 3.3.1 MU5 until HPE resolves the issue. For more information, see VMware knowledge base article 83038.

Auto Deploy and Image Builder Issues
  • If an ESXi host machine uses UEFI firmware, you cannot use VMware vSphere Auto Deploy in a VLAN network

    You might not be able to use vSphere Auto Deploy to deploy an ESXi image over a VLAN network environment when the ESXi host machine uses UEFI firmware. UEFI Secure boot fails at the ipxe binary loading stage because the implementation of VLAN support of some UEFI firmware vendors might not fully support iPXE.

    Workaround: None

Virtual Machine Management Issues
  • NEW: You cannot deploy virtual machines by using a VM template after an upgrade to vCenter Server 6.7 Update 3l

    After an upgrade to vCenter Server Update 6.7 3l, you cannot deploy virtual machines by using the Guest OS customization option and a VM template with computer name longer than 15 characters. The issue only occurs if the computer name of the VM template exceeds 15 characters.

    Workaround: Make sure that the computer name of the VM template has less than 15 characters. For more information, see VMware knowledge base article 81832.

Known Issues from Prior Releases

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

check-circle-line exclamation-circle-line close-line
Scroll to top icon