Posted on 08/12/2008 9:07:18 AM PDT by Doohickey
This morning the VMware’s customers that upgraded their virtual data centers with the new Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2 (build 103908) had an awful surprise: any virtual machine that is turned off cannot be powered on again, and any attempt to execute a VMotion (the live migration of a VM from one host to another) fails.
The reason behind this huge and unprecedented issue is an error in the license expiration time.
The only way to workaround the problem at the moment is to disable the Network Time Protocol (NTP) client and set the date back to August 10, as promptly suggested by a customer here.
Of course this countermeasure has an impact on the log consistency and on any tool that analyzes the VirtualCenter events for different purposes (performance monitoring, trend analysis, capacity planning calculation, etc.).
More than that obviously, this issue has an impact on the availability of those infrastructures where the IT administrators are in vacation (and there are many on August 12) and cannot operate any recovery.
The users from all around the world are reporting failures of part of their systems and in some case even the complete knock-down.
VMware has over 200,000 enterprise customers (100% of Fortune 100 and 95% of Fortune 500), and it claimed that 59% of them use VMotion in production. The company didn’t provide any statistics about how many already deployed the Update 2, but the license fault could have impacted thousands of them.
VMware is aware of the issue but couldn’t provide any immediate solution. At the moment it seems that the entire VMware Knowledge Base collapsed. Calling the support line customers can just receive a brief message saying that the problem will be solved within 36 hours. Additionally, VMware removed the capability to download any affected product.
The existence of such issue is more than enough to undermine the credibility of the company (which already made some mistakes in the past) in a complex moment of its successful history. A 36 hours timeframe to provide a solution is just an unacceptable answer for all those enterprises that deploy virtualization in production.
The whole thing may severely damage the stock performance of today.
I guess I’m fortunate that in my job I deal with actual real infrastructure, not that “virtual” stuff.
That explains it. Thanks for the update.
VMWare is the only virtue I have.
I knew there was a reason for dragging my heels and not upgrading from 3.02 to 3.5. And I thought I was just lazy. :-)
I currently run 25 machines on (2) VMware servers, so this is a little scary.
Fortunately, it's the freebie version 1.0.6.
How long were you waiting to spring that one on us?
LOL. People should have learned from Microsoft that software defects lead to higher earnings and stock price.
True. That can be said for a lot of other industries as well.
VMWare is announcing a software update to be released by noon PST tomorrow.
Unfortunately, VMWare seems to be unaware that we’re on daylight savings time now.
Y2K ver 2.008...
On a kind of related story, about five or six years ago I ran into a Kerberos time epoch flaw on my entire installed base of Red Hat-based NAS devices. About 25 terabytes of storage inaccessible for about a day and a half. (The flaw was the NAS vendor’s, not Linux’s).
“Antivirus2009” took over my PC with myriad pop ups that tried to force me into buying 0 $50 - the program for ‘protection’ (I have the AVG8 free program)
Anti-9 blocked me from Internet Explorer, my favorites - including my banking - my email - everything.
I found it in my system and ‘uninstalled’ even tho’ I had never installed in the first place. It went and hid in another place - I found it and ‘deleted’ - it's hidden somewhere else now.
My son, a long-hauler, on the road out west, talked me through a reset, as recc. here today, but to no avail. Then we did a ‘CleanCache’ thing - nada.
So finally, he had me download FireFox for my browser - and I am using that.
I sent Antivirus a blistering email - like that will do any good, but made ME feel good.
I just tried Int. Explorer 0 and wasn't blocked...so maybe???
Just last week, my whole system crashed - major panic.
But my son, rolling down the road, was able to talk me through several possibilities, even though he thought it was a goner. (Picture a great granny with a flashlight, mirror, etc., poking around the back and guts of the tower!) But we got ‘er up and running again with no loss of data.
These computers remind me of the little girl with the little curl, “right in the middle of her forehead. And when she was good, she was very, very good. And when she was bad, she was horrid”
I'm too old for this. I grew up an a north woods farm with my grandparents in the late ‘30’s, early 40’s. We didn't even have electricity. TV was yet to be heard of. Life was simple. Life was good. I could go back to most of it - but would need my ‘puter and hot water spigot.
Epoch errors are a nightmare. Good luck with your vendor.
Sorry for your trouble, but this isn’t in any way related. This is specialized software normally found in corporate data centers unless you’re a geek.
Get a Mac. It works the way a computer ought to. Life is good.
Absolutely. All Mac all the time since 1986.
ping
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