Host PSOD (purple screen of death) would occur if Hardware TSO is disabled with qfle3 driver.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Host PSOD (purple screen of death) would occur if Hardware TSO is disabled with qfle3 driver.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0

Resolution

UseHWTSO setting is only applicable on non-overlay packets. If the packet is encapsulated, it is recommended to disable VXLAN/Geneve inner TSO to avoid PSOD.

Workaround:
(1) Disable Hardware TSO
# esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Net/UseHwTSO

Disable UseHwTSO6 if IPv6 is configured.
# esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Net/UseHwTSO6

(2) Disable VXLAN/Geneve inner TSO

Option (a)
It's not persist across reboot, but it can disable TSO on a specific vmnicX.

# esxcli network nic software set --ipv4tso=true --ipv6tso=true --geneveoffload=true --ipv6tsoext=true --vxlanencap=true -n vmnicX

Option (b)
It's persist setting across reboot, apply to all the qfle3 vmnics on the host.

# esxcli system module parameters set -p "offload_flags=1" -m qfle3
# reboot