VMware’s vSphere ESXi 7.0 U3, U3a, and U3b and VMware vCenter 7.0 U3b are no longer available for download due to several critical issues identified in them.

Issues experienced in the field

Organizations running vSphere 7.0 Update 3 have reported the following critical issues:

• ESXi 7.0 Update 3 hosts can experience a PSOD when virtual machines on a VMFS6 thin disk execute UNMAP/TRIM function 
• Starting with vSphere 7.0 Update 3, the inbox i40enu network driver for ESXi changes name back to i40en.  This can result in ESXi failing to update
• In vCenter 7.0 Update 3 FIPS compliance was enabled by default; This has the impact of blocking the SMB protocol; VAMI backup fails using SMB Protocol on vCenter 7.0 U3
• Enabling vSphere HA might fail or never complete on hosts that were upgraded to ESXi 7.0 Update 3 
• When a host attempting to power on or vMotion Virtual Machines with Physical RDM LUNS, a condition may occur where services fail to close properly introduced in ESXi 7.0 U3, resulting in device handles incorrectly being left open resulting in "failed to lock the file" conflicts  
• The hostd service on ESXi 7.0U3 repeatedly crashes due to memory corruption in a function that is part of the time service event monitoring (enabled by default).
• Lifecycle Manager will not be available in the vSphere Client when logging into vCenter Server 7.0 U3 with Active Directory or LDAP credentials. This is not apparent when using SSO domain credentials  
• File based backups will fail when the database consistency check falsely detects that the DB is unhealthy in environments using VSAN
• Patching vCenter Server to 7.0 U3 might fail during staging due to a stale configuration
• File based backups will fail when the database consistency check falsely detects that the DB is unhealthy if a proxy is configured on the vCenter Server
• Upgrading to vCenter Server 7.0 U3 will fail when a stale extension is leftover in the vPostgres database from a previous VCHA configuration 

Recalled and available versions

The following vSphere 7.0 Update 3 releases have been removed:

• vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 3    (build 18644231)
• vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 3a  (build 18825058)
• vSphere ESXi 7.0 Update 3b  (build 18905247)
• vSphere vCenter 7.0 Update 3b (build 18901211)

There had already been two updates to try to remedy the above issues, but the issues ended up being too serious to keep trying to patch in-situ.

What to do with this information

if your organization utilizes a previous version of VMware vSphere, hold off on planning the upgrade to vSphere 7.0 Update 3, for now. Eventually, a build that remedies the above issues will be made available and will be safe to upgrade to. There is hope that this update will arrive in time to escape the end of support for vSphere 6.5 and vSphere 6.7.

If you are already on 7.0 Update 3 and aren’t experiencing issues, you can ignore this blogpost and will likely be among the first organizations to upgrade to new builds anyway.

If you are already on 7.0 Update 3 and experiencing issues, you will receive support from VMware.

Further reading

VMware 7.0 ESXi Update 3 Pulled for Bugs  
Important Information on ESXi 7 Update 3  
VMware withdraws major vSphere release due to bugs
vSphere 7.0 Update 3 Known Issues and Workarounds