VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 2 - what's in

VMware has released few days back a vCenter Server 5.1 Update 2 (vCenter Server 5.1 Update 2 | Build 1473063). This update brings customization for Windows 8.1, Windows 2012 R2 and SLES 11 SP3 plus more. Also there has been multiple fixes released which might interest you or your clients if they run on 5.1.

Update: Note that vCententer Server 5.5 U1c has been released recently.

To point out different upgrade scenarios, you might want to note that if you currently run on the 5.1 release, you can only use the custom installation option (not the Easy Install) to upgrade to subsequent 5.1 Update or Patch releases. In this scenario you would first upgrade vCenter Single Sign On, followed by vCenter Inventory Service and then vCenter Server.

Together with vCenter 5.1 U2 there is also new ESXi 5.1U2 release which matches the newly available features of vCenter as well. Check out the release notes here.

New features of VMware vCenter Server 5.1 Update 2:

Possibility to run vCenter Server on Windows Server 2012 R2.
Database support for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1
Support for customization of the following guest operation systems:

Windows 8.1
RHEL 6.4
Windows Server 2012 R2
SLES 11 Service Pack 3

Resolved Issues section shows that some of the OpenSSL libraries has been patched:

Update to OpenSSL version openssl-0.9.8y addresses multiple security issues
The OpenSSL library is updated to version openssl-0.9.8y to address multiple security issues. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the names CVE-2013-0169 and CVE-2013-0166 to these issues.

But the resolved issues sections has also more:

Storage Issues – Virtual disk I/O performance might degrade due to the misaligned disks of the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance. Due to misalignment in the disk partition of the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance, overall virtual disk I/O performance might degrade.

Attempts to deploy vApp on vCloud Director fails – Attempts to deploy vApp on vCloud Director fails with the Read timed out error message. This issue occurs due to delay in serializing the SPS profile.

Impossible to log in to the vCenter Server Virtual Appliance through vSphere Client using Windows session credentials
Random failures of VMware VirtualCenter Server service
Service hostd might stop responding and generates hostd-worker dump
Message displayed that the access is unauthorized in the Log Browser in the vSphere Web Client.
Error after upgrade in the Past Day Stats Rollup job
Impossible to create thin disks on a SDRS cluster if the disk size is larger than individual datastore.
Disconnections of ESXi host from vCenter because of to sfcbd exhausting inodes
Impossibility accessing the VMFS datastore or some files
VMware VirtualCenter Server service might fail if disk I/O usage on the vCenter Server system is high

The list of all fixes is long …

VMware ESX/ESXi

The following issues have been addressed:

ESXi hosts disconnect from vCenter Server and cannot be reconnected to the vCenter Server. This issue is caused by the hardware monitoring service (sfcdb) that populates the /var/run/sfcb directory with over 5000 files.
Incorrect error messages similar to the following might be displayed by CIM providers:
“Request Header Id (886262) != Response Header reqId (0) in request to provider 429 in process 5. Drop response.”
The Hardware Status tab fails to display health statuses and displays an error message similar to the following: “Hardware monitoring service on this host is not responding or not available.”
In an ESXi host, when reading the Field Replaceable Unit (FRU) inventory data using the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) tool, the vmklinux_9:ipmi_thread of vmkapimod incorrectly displays the CPU usage as hundred percent.
The host IPMI System Event Log is not getting cleared in a cluster environment.
Some 3D applications display misplaced geometry on a Windows 7 or Windows 8 virtual machine if the Enable 3D support option is selected.
Netlogond might consume high memory in Active Directory environment with multiple unreachable Domain Controllers. As a result, Netlogond might fail and ESXi host might lose Active Directory functionality.
Virtual machine becomes unresponsive due to a signal 11 error, while executing SVGA code in svga2_map_surface.
An ESXi host creating virtual machines on a remotely mounted vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) datastore might stop responding. This is due to the VSA Manager plugin not handling network errors correctly.
ESXi host experiences a purple diagnostic screen with errors for E1000PollRxRing and E1000DevRx when the rxRing buffer fills up and the max Rx ring is set to more than 2. The next Rx packet received that is handled by the second ring is NULL, causing a processing error.
Whenever you reset a management network where the management traffic is enabled on multiple VMkernel ports, the IP address displayed on the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) changes.
In vCenter performance chart, the net.throughput.usage related value is in Kilobytes, but the same value is returned in bytes in the vmkernel. This leads to incorrect representation of values in the vCenter performance chart.
When you provision and customize a virtual machine from a template on a vDS with Ephemeral Ports, the virtual machine might lose connection from the network.
The ESXi userworld OpenSSL library is updated to version openssl-0.9.8y to resolve multiple security issues.
The ESXi userworld libxml2 library has been updated to resolve a security issue.
VMware ESXi and ESX contain a NULL pointer dereference in the handling of the Network File Copy (NFC) traffic. To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker must intercept and modify the NFC traffic between ESXi/ESX and the client. Exploitation of the issue might lead to a Denial of Service.
When you attempt to remove multiple NFS datastores using the Host Profile option, an error occurs because there might be a datastore that has already been deleted.
On an ESXi host when bandwidthCap and throughputCap are set at the same time, the I/O throttling option might not work on virtual machines.
When a SCSI Request Sense command is sent to Raw Device Mapping (RDM) in Physical Mode from a guest operating system, sometimes the returned sense data is NULL (zeroed).
VMware Tools is updated to provide pre-built modules for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP3, Oracle Linux 5.x with 2.6.39-200/300/400 kernels and Oracle Linux 6.x with 2.6.39-200/300/400 kernels