ESXi host fails with a purple diagnostic screen and reports the error: VMKernel RO mem checksum BAD

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The ESXi host fails with a purple diagnostic screen.
• The ESXi host experiences a fatal error while comparing the checksum.
• You see a backtrace similar to:
  
  yyyy-mm-dd <time> </time>cpu56:32839)0x4123c11dddf0:[0x418022855768]CpuSchedDispatch@vmkernel#nover+0x2468 stack: 0x1130
  yyyy-mm-dd <time> </time>cpu56:32839)0x4123c11dde60:[0x418022855c65]CpuSchedWait@vmkernel#nover+0x245 stack: 0x410800000001
  yyyy-mm-dd <time> </time>cpu56:32839)0x4123c11ddec0:[0x418022856437]CpuSched_SleepUntilTC@vmkernel#nover+0xfb stack: 0x0
  yyyy-mm-dd <time> </time>cpu56:32839)0x4123c11ddfd0:[0x4180227fc5f0]NetCoalesceWorldFn@vmkernel#nover+0x298 stack: 0x0
  yyyy-mm-dd <time></time> cpu56:32839)0x4123c11ddff0:[0x418022853242]CpuSched_StartWorld@vmkernel#nover+0xfa stack: 0x0
  yyyy-mm-dd <time></time> cpu56:32839)VMKernel RO mem checksum BAD.
  yyyy-mm-dd <time> </time>cpu56:32839)base fs=0x0 gs=0x41804e000000 Kgs=0x0
  
  

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Cause

The area in the memory where the virtual machine kernel is stored is read-only and should not change. This issue occurs when the memory where the virtual machine kernel is stored is modified.

When an ESXi host experiences a fatal error, the ESXi host compares the checksum of the contents of the memory with a known good checksum. If they do not match, you see the VMKernel RO mem checksum BAD error,

Resolution

The only time when the area of memory that stores the kernel can be modified is very early during the boot process. If this error occurs at any other time, it is likely that there is an issue with the host's physical hardware.

To resolve this issue, contact your hardware vendor to test for defective hardware components in the host.

Additional Information

ESXi ホストに紫色の診断画面が表示され、次のエラーが出力される：VMKernel RO mem checksum BAD