Host downloads from Update Manager are extremely slow

[degustator]

Hi. I've set up Update Manager, scanned one of my 3.5u1 hosts and started remediation. During every remediation attempt I receive three erors:

• Action "Install" finishes with message "Operation timed out".

• Action "Scan" finishes with message "A general system error occured: Invalid fault"

• Action "Remediate Entity" finishes with message "VMware Update Manager had a failure".

But on the host I can see that esxupdate is still rinning. And I can see the real problem in esxupdate.log. It seems that every rpm download takes very long. For example:

INFO: states: Downloading VMware-esx-apps-3.5.0-95350.i386.rpm...
DEBUG: Depot: About to check policyChecker for /var/spool/esxupdate/ESX350-200805501-BG/VMware-esx-apps-3.5.0-95350.i386.rpm

9 minutes to download a 2,5 MB file! That's about 5 KB per second. But my Update Manager is in the same subnet with Hosts and I have 1 GB connection there. I tried to reboot the host and Update Manager host with no luck. So how can I further investigate the trouble?

Thanks in advance!

P.S. If I wait that long then esxupdate completes successfully (though Update Manager knows nothing about it). So the problem is somehow performance-related only.

[kjb007]

Have you checked your virus scan software? I'm assuming that you are running some sort of virus scanner. Double-check that is not slowing you down.

-KjB

[pizaro]

hm, if you try copying the very same rpm file (manually) from UM server to ESX server (through scp for example) - how long does that take? what is running between the UM server & ESX host?

[ExCon]

I'm seeing the slow behavior at some of my sites, as well... Some sites patch normally, and some take f-o-r-e-v-e-r. I haven't had a chance to t-shoot yet, though.

[degustator]

Thank you all for posting here.

kjb007, there is no virus scanning software neither on UM machne neither on host. Actually, NO other software then UM itself and current Windows updates.

pizaro, both SCP transfer from UM to host or manual browser download to another windows machine are fast. They take only 1-2 seconds for the same rpm file. And there's not much "running between" the host and UM machine. UM is installed in VM which is running on the same cluster with the host I'm trying to patch. So there's only a vSwitch and physical blade switch between them.

ExCon, thank you. I was glad to know my problem is not unique.

[senseipetz]

Hi all,

Having the same behaviour. But on our location it was at the Update Manager U1 much more faster. Since the U2 of the UM the scan behaviour is going slower and also at some customers it is coming with failed or timed out. Will be interested what VMware want to do about the speed of the Manager.

[BrandonJ]

We've seen the same problem since Update 2. I just went to Update 3 on

my VC server and am in the process of pushing out ESX 3.5 Update 3 to

all of our hosts. Our hosts are all Update 2 (with the license bug

patch installed) and it's taking about 8 hours to go through a 7 host

cluster! I don't remember how slow the U2 rollout was (just remember

it being way slower than pre-U2) but it almost seems like U3 might even

be slower. As anybody gotten anywhere on this?

[OlivR]

Same problem over here... Still no clue about what could cause this?

VC and update manager on the same physical server. Lots of CPU/Memory. Patches applied manually on the host itself take a few seconds. But it takes minutes with update manager.

Thanks

Olivier

[jspilon]

Same problem here, looks like it does nothing in between updates for a while, it even takes 10-15 minutes before it even kicks the first install task, it was not like this before updates

Any chance you have any update on this issue?

[degustator]

Hey, any update on this? Even with Update 4 the problem is still here :smileysad:

[DoubleEweAreEx]

Has there been any progress on this, trying to do updates to update 3 ESX server and its taking f-o-r-e-v-e-r!

Infact I would love to know if there is a way, apart from the esxupdate.log, to track the progress of the download f the update from the VC server.

[pkoster]

I have the same problem here. THe problem site is a remote site overseas with limited bandwidth. I found this KB article http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017253 and committed the changes to both the ESX server and the VC server (which is also our VUM server). The problem now is that the remediation task continues to run but the install task times out after the default 15 minutes.

Now we have a remediation task at 39% and the install task has timed out. I imagine the remediation will end after 3 hours.

This is on ESX 3.5 U5 with VC 2.5 U5. There is no firewall between the sites so virus scanning etc is not an issue. Just the limited bandwidth.

Thanks.

Phil

[Adam_Ladd]

We are also facing same issue. remediation task at 39% and the install task has operation timed out after 16 min 40 sec approx everytime. Already tried http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1017253 and still it timout after 16 min 40 sec approx.

Anybody able to resolve it.

Thanks

Adam