VDDK crash dumps might be missing on Windows machines

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article helps customers deal with unknown VDDK failures by enabling them to produce core dumps that may be useful for troubleshooting and diagnosis.

When a VDDK application fails on a Windows machine while running vmacore library code, no crash dump is generated.

 

Environment

VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit 6.7

Cause

VDDK runs code and creates threads from vmacore.dll, which has its own exception handler. If a crash occurs in these threads, the core dump file is generated by vmacore.dll

In a hard-coded folder location, C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\VMware. If this folder does not exist, vmacore skips generating a crash dump.

Resolution

A fix is available in VDDK release version 7.0.