ESXi 6.5 vs ESXi 6.0

[CougTek]

I've upgraded a development server from ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 this evening. The web interface is nice, but the server took about twice as long to boot. This particular server isn't very solicitated and I don't reboot it very often, being a dev server.

Still, is the longer boot process something you've noticed too? That server is an HP (wasn't HPE yet back then) DL380p Gen8, so it's vanilla as possible. The only slightly less common component in it is an Emulex dual-port FC 8Gb HBA.

 

[CougTek]

In case you plan to ask, yes, I've used the HPE customized ESXi installation.

 

[Handruin]

The revised web interface actually became available in ESXi 6.0 update 2 in case you need to roll back for any reason or if you have 6.0 systems that you can't update to 6.5 for some reason. I upgraded my home systems a few weeks ago and ended up rolling them back to 6.0 u2 from 6.5 because my SSDs were having horrible latency issues and serious other performance issues as a result of 45+ second average latency (yes, seconds).

Turns out I found a solution the day after I rolled back and this was due to VMware changing the AHCI driver in this version that causes slow disk performance (which is a huge understatement in my situation). I mention this in case your slow boot issues are a result of this problem. There is more information in this URL including steps on how to revert to the previous driver in case you're having issues.

 

[Handruin]

Why do you consider the Emulex dual port adapter to be less common? I usually think of Emulex (since Avago, now Broadcom) as the more-common FC HBA but maybe in the case of the HPE blade system it wasn't for you?

 

[blakerwry]

I'm still on 5.5U3. I haven't found a reason to upgrade yet...

Issues like the above as well as similar bugs that a client of ours has experienced on 6.0 and 6.5 have made me glad that I haven't upgraded. If I had, I would probably feel like vmware was using me as their guinea pig to test their beta software.

 

[CougTek]

Why do you consider the Emulex dual port adapter to be less common? I usually think of Emulex (since Avago, now Broadcom) as the more-common FC HBA but maybe in the case of the HPE blade system it wasn't for you?

It is very common, but maybe not to the point of being on more servers than not present. Unlike the RAID controller and network adapter. But yes, support for everything in those DL380p should be considered mandatory before releasing a software version. They don't have any excuse.

 

[Handruin]

An Emulex HBA is pretty common on enterprise deployments of ESXi. Was your Emulex adapter not supported for some reason?

 

[CougTek]

I don't even use it on that server (bought it used and I use local storage, not connected to a SAN). I was just wondering what caused the longer boot time, but I think it's because it's loading a more complex web interface since that's the main way to control the VMs now under ESXi 6.5. I've never noticed it on 6.0 update 2.