Late yesterday, VMware made available NSX 6.3.5 (Build Number 7119875) for download. This is a full maintenance release including over 32 documented bug fixes. As you may recall, 6.3.4 was a minor patch release with only a few fixes, which is why 6.3.5 has been released so soon afterward.
There are numerous fixes in this release that will be of interest to a lot of customers. Of special note are the fixes related to Guest Introspection – a feature leveraged by 3rd party AV and security products, as well as the IDFW. I was very happy to see that GI got front and center attention in 6.3.5. Along with some needed CPU utilization fixes, there is also a fix for issue number 1897878, outlined in VMware KB 2151235 that I’ve seen quite a bit of in the wild.
Another interesting behavior change is also quoted in the ‘What’s New in 6.3.5’ section:
“Guest Introspection service VM will now ignore network events sent by guest VMs unless Identify Firewall or Endpoint Monitoring is enabled”
This is a feature that we’ve sometimes manually disabled in older releases in very large deployments to improve 3rd party A/V scalability. The vast majority of customers don’t use ‘Network Introspection’ services, so it’s good to see that it’s now off by default unless needed.
Those using Guest Introspection should definitely consider upgrading to 6.3.5.
Another interesting statement that I’m sure many people are interested in is:
“Host prep now has troubleshooting enhancements, including additional information for “not ready” errors”
EAM generally hasn’t provided very descriptive statements in the ‘Not Ready’ dialogue, so this is also a very welcome change.
And of course, the controller disconnect issue and password expiry issues are also fixed in 6.3.5. This obviously brings up a good question – should you still patch with the re-released versions of 6.3.3/6.3.4, or go straight to 6.3.5? I see no reason why you would not go straight to 6.3.5.
Here is some of the relevant information:
NSX 6.3.5 Download Page
NSX 6.3.5 Release Notes
Definitely have a read through the release notes – there are some real gems in there. I hope to get this deployed in my home lab sometime in the next few days!
vswitchzero 