NSX-T Bridge Edge crashed with "MONITOR PANIC: vmk: vcpu-0:Too many sticky pages"

Products

• VMware NSX
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• You have deployed NSX-T Edge VM to bridge network.
• The Edge VM crashed with sample messages in vmware.log :

2021-05-21T19:55:49.893Z| vcpu-10| W115: MONITOR PANIC: vmk: vcpu-0:Too many sticky pages
2021-05-21T19:56:08.336Z| vcpu-10| W115: A core file is available in "/vmfs/volumes/5f460918-########-####-##########b0/<vm-name>/vmx-zdump.000"

• ESXi vmkernel.log may contain messages :

2021-05-11T04:38:50.328Z cpu46:2105289)WARNING: VmMemPin: vm 2104149: 217: pframe[0x100f152dd] pin count exceeded
2021-05-11T04:38:50.328Z cpu46:2105289)WARNING: World: vm 2104149: 8463: vmm0:<vm-name>:vmk: vcpu-0:Too many sticky pages
 

• This can occur on either the active or standby Edge for a given bridge. 

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center 2.x
VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Resolution

This issue has been resolved in ESXi 6.7 P06 and ESXi 7.0 U3.
Workaround:

• To workaround the issue, the below line can be added to the *.vmx file for the Edge VMs:

sched.mem.prealloc.pinnedMainMem = "TRUE" 

• This setting can be altered by editing the VM settings in the advanced VM options from the UI.
• Settings should be modified only when VM is powered off.