Understanding the message: Panic requested by one or more 3rd party NMI handlers

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information about third-party NMI handlers and how they can trigger a purple diagnostic screen.

For more information, see Interpreting an ESX host purple diagnostic screen (1004250).

Symptoms:

• An ESX/ESXi host halts with a purple diagnostic screen with this message:
  
  Panic requested by one or more 3rd party NMI handlers
  

Environment

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

Resolution

Some servers running ESX/ESXi 4.1 and later may require a third-party driver to be installed to ensure proper handling of non-maskable interrupts (NMIs). The third-party NMI driver ensures that NMIs are properly detected and logged. Without this driver, NMIs signaling platform-specific hardware faults may be ignored.

Third-party NMI drivers register handlers with the VMkernel. When an NMI is received from hardware, each registered third-party NMI driver is consulted and it decides whether the host should panic or continue running. If any third-party driver's registered NMI handler decides so, the VMkernel halts with a purple diagnostic screen with this message:

Panic requested by one or more 3rd party NMI handlers.

An NMI handled in this manner may be representative of a hardware problem, or manually triggered as part of troubleshooting. For more information about troubleshooting, see Using hardware NMI facilities to troubleshoot unresponsive hosts (1014767).

The logic used by a third-party NMI driver in determining whether it should or should not request the VMkernel to halt with a purple diagnostic screen differs between hardware vendors. For more information, consult the hardware vendor which provided the third-party NMI handler.

If no third-party NMI driver is present, or none decides to halt the host, the VMkernel may still decide to halt with a purple diagnostic screen following its own criteria. The resulting log message on the purple diagnostic screen will differ. For more information, see Identifying and addressing Non-Maskable Interrupt events on an ESX host (1804).

Additional Information

When working with VMware and/or hardware vendors to determine the cause of a purple diagnostic screen, collect diagnostic information from the affected host. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information from an ESX or ESXi host that experiences a purple diagnostic screen (1004128).

After you reboot the server, you may try running Hardware Diagnostic Check as part of troubleshooting the hardware issue.

Collecting diagnostic information from an ESX or ESXi host that experiences a purple diagnostic screen
Interpreting an ESX/ESXi host purple diagnostic screen
Using hardware NMI facilities to troubleshoot unresponsive hosts
ESX and ESXi installations on HP systems require the HP NMI driver
"LINT1 motherboard interrupt" error in an ESX/ESXi host
了解消息“一个或多个第三方 NMI 处理程序请求崩溃”
メッセージについて：1 つ以上のサードパーティ製 NMI ハンドラによって要求されたパニック