On ESXi 8.0/8.0U1/8.0U2, if Linux Virtual Machine:
The Virtual Machine may suffer soft lockups, or kernel panic(which happens on some supported distros if kernel.softlockup_panic is set as 1).
Logs show messages like:
[ 948.008390] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 22s!
...
[ 976.011365] watchdog: BUG: soft lockup - CPU#0 stuck for 21s!
To determine the virtual hardware version of Virtual Machine, select the Virtual Machine from the vSphere Client and click the Summary tab. The Compatibility field displays the virtual hardware version. For instance, "ESXi 8.0 and later (Virtual Machine version 20)" in the filed means the Virtual Machine is on HWv20.
Note:
RHEL:8.7/9.1 and later
Ubuntu: 22.04.1 LTS (kernel 5.15.0-41.44 onwards onwards) and 22.10 LTS
SUSE SLES: SLES15 SP3 (kernel 5.3.18-150300.59.93.1 onwards) and SLES15 SP4
Photon: Photon 4.0
The VMCI DMA datagrams feature is incompatible with Fault Tolerance. With Fault Tolerance turned on, the Linux Kernel vmw_vmci driver for the VMCI device ends up in a busy loop, causing the Virtual Machine to enter a soft lockup if the VMCI device is used.
This issue is fixed in ESXi 8.0 U3 build 24022510.
Workaround for ESXi 8.0, 8.0.1,8.0.2:
Post verifying FT Virtual Machine is impacted by checking virtual hardware version and GuestOS version, please follow the below mentioned steps to reconfigure the FT Virtual Machine:
Power-Off the FT Virtual Machine
Add the attribute/value vmci.dmaDatagramSupport = FALSE to Virtual Machine through vSphere Client. Please refer Set Advanced Virtual Machine Attributes for information on setting the advanced attributes for Virtual Machine .
Power-On the FT Virtual Machine.