There seems to be an issue with the latest ESXi running on Dell M710 blades using SD cards.
We've recently added 4 extra blades to a new M1000e chassis and as part of the commissioning process we installed the latest version of ESXi (1065491, our other blades are running 838463)
The error we get is on boot:
"Error loading /state.tgz
Fatal Error: 6 (Buffer too small)"
All my research said this was potentially due to faulty media but this doesn't appear to be the case this time:
-Installing Original ISO gave this issue
-Reinstalling using new ISO (with matching MD5) burnt to a new CD gave the issue
-Reinstalling using new ISO (with matching MD5) via KVM virtual media gave the issue
-Reinstalling using Dell customised ISO gave the issue
-Reinstalling using the 799733 ISO fixes the issue
We downgraded by re-installing with 799733 and that worked fine, as soon as we upgraded (via update manager patches) to 1065491 and rebooted the issue appeared again.
The blades and chassis are fully patched with updated firmware and BIOS and I've tried booting in both BIOS and UEFI mode and it makes no difference.
I've also tried swapping SD cards in case there was write issues but that also makes no difference.
Can anybody shed any light about where I can start looking to try and fix this?
I've checked the release notes and I can't see anything remotely like I'm experiencing, does anybody know what might have changed in ESXi 5.1U1 to cause this?