Quick update: VMware released patches for both ESXi and vCenter 6.5 today. There are quite a few fixes we could discuss, but I will concentrate on the highlights and provide a few helpful links.

VMware ESXi 6.5, Patch ESXi-6.5.0-20170304001-standard

Fixes

• UNMAP – Automated UNMAP was introduced in 6.5, but has experienced some issues relating to requests not being passed to the storage array; thus, no space reclamation. Cormac Hogan has an in-depth article on this.
• ESXi SNMP Crash – The ESXi SNMP agent was known to randomly crash which in turn reported a false host reboot alarm to the SNMP monitor.
• Snapshot Cancellation on VVols – Cancelling a snapshot whose VMDKs resided on a VVol resulted in the disks not getting rolled back properly and possible data loss.

More issues that this patch resolves found here.

vCenter Server 6.5.0b

Additions

• Added Functionality to the HTML 5 vSphere Client – I love seeing this as a priority. In its current capacity, the HTML 5 client serves little purpose besides performing basic tasks. As functionality expands, the HTML 5 client is something to get excited about.
  • OVF Deployment (URL deployment only)
  • Datastore Operations
    • Create, Mount, Unmount
  • Network Operations
    • Distributed Switch, Port Creation
  • Drag and Drop
  • VM Conversion
  • Register VMs
  • Create Tags

More functionality updates found here.

Fixes

• Single-Sign On Issues – Under high-load scenarios, the vSphere Web Client could fail due to authentication attempts.
• Upgrade Issues – There were a handful of issues when it came to upgrading to 6.5
  • E-mail alerts no longer functioning post-upgrade.
  • Pre-Upgrade check failing due to duplicate name in the network folder.
  • ESXi Agent manager failing during export phase.
• OVF Deploy Template Errors – In environments upgraded from 5.1 or earlier, the OVF deployment would fail, stating you need the 6.5.00 vSphere Client. I wrote about this issue last week.
• E-mail Alerts Send As – Previously, email alerts from the VCSA would by sent from root@VCSA_FQDN which was considered invalid by some relay servers. The VCSA now sends emails with the return-path of the configured email sender. The setup process can be found here.

vCenter Server 6.5.0b Release Notes