Software Update: VMware ESXi 4.0 build 164009

Virtualization has gained an increasingly prominent place in business in recent years. Well-known names include Xen and VMware. The latter company has with its brand new vSphere 4 a solid platform. An important part of that platform is VMware ESX, this is also released as a free to use bare metal hypervisor with VMware ESXi as product name. For more information, we refer you to this page. The developers have released version 4.0 build 164009 of VMware ESXi with the following announcement:

What’s New

This release of vSphere 4.0 includes ESXi 4.0 Installable, ESXi 4.0 Embedded, and vCenter Server 4.0. Read about the new and enhanced features in this release in What’s New in VMware vSphere 4.0.

ESXi, vCenter Server, and vSphere Client Version Compatibility

The vSphere Compatibility Matrixes provide details on the compatibility of current and previous versions of VMware vSphere components, including ESXi, vCenter Server, the vSphere Client, and optional VMware products. In addition, check the vSphere 4.0 Compatibility Matrixes for information on supported management and backup agents before installing ESXi or vCenter Server.

Installation Notes for This Release

Read the ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide for step-by-step guidance on installing and configuring ESXi Installable and vCenter Server or the ESXi Embedded and vCenter Server Setup Guide for step-by-step guidance on setting up ESXi Embedded and vCenter Server.

After successful installation of ESXi Installable or successful boot of ESXi Embedded, several configuration steps are essential. In particular, some licensing, networking, and security configuration is necessary. Refer to the following guides in the vSphere documentation for guidance on these configuration tasks.

• The ESXi Installable and vCenter Server Setup Guide or the ESXi Embedded and vCenter Server Setup Guide for information on licensing
• the ESXi Configuration Guide for information on networking and security

Future releases of VMware vSphere might not support VMFS version 2 (VMFS2). VMware recommends upgrading or migrating to VMFS version 3 or higher. see the vSphere Upgrade Guide.

Future releases of VMware vCenter Server might not support installation on 32-bit Windows operating systems. VMware recommends installing vCenter Server on a 64-bit Windows operating system. If you have VirtualCenter 2.x installed, see the vSphere Upgrade Guide for instructions on installing vCenter Server on a 64-bit operating system and preserving your VirtualCenter database.

The VMware Tools RPM installer, which was previously available on the VMware Tools ISO image for Linux guest operating systems, has been removed for this release of ESXi. VMware recommends using the tar.gz installer to install VMware Tools on virtual machines with Linux guest operating systems.

Management Information Base (MIB) files related to ESXi are not bundled with vCenter Server 4.0. Only MIB files related to vCenter Server are shipped with vCenter Server 4.0. All MIB files can be downloaded from the VMware Web site.

Internationalization

VMware vSphere 4.0 is available in the following languages:

• English
• German
• Japanese
• Simplified Chinese

vSphere Client Local Forcing Mode

With vSphere 4.0, you can configure the vSphere Client to provide the interface text in English even when the machine on which it is running is non-English. This configuration can be done for the duration of a single session by supplying a command-line switch. This configuration applies to the interface text and will not affect other locale-related settings such as date/time or numeric formatting.

The following vSphere Client command will cause the individual session to appear in English:
vpxClient -local en_US

vCenter Server Upgrades

You can upgrade VirtualCenter Server 2.x to vCenter Server 4.0. To upgrade, first confirm that your database is supported with vCenter Server 4.0, back up your supported database, SSL certificates, and VirtualCenter Server configuration. Then run the vCenter Server installer. The installer informs you that an earlier version of vCenter Server is on the computer and will be upgraded.

ESXi Upgrades

vSphere 4.0 offers two GUI-based applications that you can use to upgrade ESXi 3.5 to ESXi 4.0:

• vSphere Host Update Utility—For standalone hosts. A standalone host is an ESX/ESXi host that is not managed by vCenter Server. see the vSphere Upgrade Guide for more information.
• VMware vCenter Update Manager—For ESX/ESXi hosts that are managed by vCenter Server. see the VMware vCenter Update Manager Administration Guide for more information.

Test Releases of vSphere 4.0

Upgrades from the vSphere 4.0 Beta and the vSphere 4.0 Release Candidate releases to vSphere 4.0 are not supported. Uninstall ESXi 4.0 Beta or Release Candidate and vCenter Server 4.0 Beta or Release Candidate, and perform fresh installations of vCenter Server 4.0 and ESXi 4.0. If you were testing Beta or Release Candidate versions of vSphere 4.0, VMware recommends recreating data you want to preserve from those setups on vSphere 4.0.

Migration of virtual machines by using VMotion from a Beta or a Release Candidate host to a vSphere 4.0 host is not supported.

VMware vSphere Web Services SDK

This release of the vSphere Web Services SDK is designed to leverage new features available in vSphere 4.0 servers: ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server 4.0 server systems. This SDK can also be used with all previous versions of ESX Server and VirtualCenter Server. For more information, and to download the vSphere Web Services SDK 4.0, see VMware vSphere Web Services SDK Documentation.

Open Source Components for vSphere

Open source components and their respective licenses for the most recent generally available release of vSphere is available here, under the Open Source tab. You can also download the source files for any GPL and/or LGPL, or other similar licenses that require the source code or modifications to source code to be made available, for the most recent generally available release of vSphere , by clicking on the link noted above.

Known Issues

The Known Issues section covers Functionality Caveats and provides a List of Known Issues.