What is up with VMware’s patch download applet?

Andy — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:56:58 +0000

Am I the only one that hates VMware’s patch download site and its corresponding applet? (Maybe – I couldn’t find anyone complaining about it looking quickly on VMware’s message boards, which I found most odd.) I’ve never been able to get it to launch under Firefox, only under IE (even on the same machine with the same JVM). And when it does launch, it is slow as molasses.

When you do finally get started downloading, your downloads get hamstrung by low DNS TTLs with – at least from here – slow resolvers in front of them:

> dig download3.vmware.com

; <<>> DiG 9.3.3rc2 <<>> download3.vmware.com ;; global options: printcmd ;; Got answer: ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 21127 ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 4, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION: ;download3.vmware.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION: download3.vmware.com. 401 IN CNAME download3.vmware.edgesuite.net. download3.vmware.edgesuite.net. 21401 IN CNAME a398.d.akamai.net. a398.d.akamai.net. 12 IN A 209.124.184.136 a398.d.akamai.net. 12 IN A 209.124.184.135

;; Query time: 1331 msec ;; SERVER: 10.1.4.29#53(10.1.4.29) ;; WHEN: Fri Jun 27 10:42:16 2008 ;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 142

At least the applet gives you the URL it’s downloading from, which has a predictable format, so you can roll your own downloader: http://download3.vmware.com/software/vi/ESX-.tgz Hello wget!

VMware would do well to emulate Sun more closely here – not only does Sun’s download app work across machines, but Sun also often gives you the option of skipping the download tool if you only have one package to download and don’t want to wait for your JVM to launch. Please, VMware?

thinking sysadmin » ie

What is up with VMware’s patch download applet?