Just a quick heads up to bring attention to an issue which I caught on Twitter. VMware published KB 1022611 today which describes a new issue that is introduced by a recent Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 SP2 & 3.5 SP1 update. Upon installing the update, the vSphere Client stops working. According to the article, the issue impacts ESX(i)3.5, 4.0, and vCenter 4.0. Contrary to the topic of this blog post, I am not placing blame on Microsoft. It remains unclear to me which company’s development staff is responsible for the software incompatibility. Microsoft obviously issued the udpate which revealed the problem, but VMware has some skin in this as well in that they need to make sure they are following Microsoft .NET Framework development standards and best practices for their enterprise hypervisor management.
Key details from the VMware KB article:
The vSphere Clients, prior to the Update 1 release, cannot be used to access the vCenter Server or ESX hosts. A Microsoft update that targets the .NET Framework, released on June 9th 2010 is causing this issue. The update http://support.microsoft.com/kb/980773 causes the vSphere Client to stop working. To correct the issue there are two options that can be performed:
- Download and install the latest version of the vSphere Client. To download the latest version, visit our website at http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/datacenter_downloads/vmware_vsphere_4/4.OR
- Remove the MS update from your Windows operating system. The vSphere Client works after the update is removed.
Note: This affects Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008, Windows Vista, and Windows 7.
