Hey everyone.

 

I have just finished my upgrade to CUCM 10.5.2 and I faced an issue at the end of the ugprade.

Of course this always happen after you spent some hours waiting for the upgrade to be successful 🙂

According to the very good Cisco DocWiki, VMware Tools are specialized drivers for virtual hardware that is installed in the UC applications when they are running virtualized. It is very important that the VMware tools version running in the UC application be in sync with the version of ESXi being used.

This clearly states that it is kinda mandatory for you to install or ugprade your VMware tools after every upgrade.

Depending of the version and application you are running, there are several methods to upgrade your VMware tools:

• Method 1: Using a COP File: This is deprecated and used only for 8.0 UC servers. Definitely not something you will deal with if you are deploying a new UC infrastructure
• Method 2: Using the CLI: This method will be used if you run UCCX 8.5(1)+ or 8.5 UC Servers or CUCM IM and P version 9. This is disruptive and the server will reboot twice.
• Method 3: Upgrade from VI Client. Very easy method. Will install while the server is in production and it is not disruptive at all. 
• Method 4: Auto Upgrade during a server power cycle. Not disruptive at all and will auto upgrade.

Please bear in mind that most of the recent UC applications are compatible with either Method 3 and 4. I generally like to enable auto upgrade.

So let’s get back to our issue.

After I completed my upgrade, I went to the vCenter client to install the VMware tools but I faced a problem. It was just not working. I even rebooted my server twice but still nothing .. I still had that same issue (image below is just representing a similar issue)

 

I gave a look at the excellent support community and bug search tool… and I was lucky enough to find that I was not the only one facing that issue 🙂

Indeed there is a recent bug hitting CUCM 10.5 (and other apps I believe). CSCul78735

SElinux is preventing the VMware tools to be installed on the server. It is regulating access control security policies to the server and has been introduced in CUCM 8.6 (in fact it replaced Cisco Security Agent).

What we need to do is to bypass SElinux policies and here is
the (very complicated) procedure:

As soon as we do that, you need to install again the VMware tools and it worked for me.

 

Do not forget to enforce SElinux after you are done with the VMware tools installation.

Hope it can help you in your future upgrades 🙂

Cheers

Nicolas