Upgrading ESXi 6.7 on Apple Inc. MacPro7,1 Server fails with PSOD - NOT IMPLEMENTED bora/vmkernel/hardware/pci/bridge.c:372 PCPU0:2097152/bootstrap

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The purpose of this article is to provide instructions to successfully upgrade/patch VMware ESXi 6.7.0 via VUM or CLI on an Apple Inc. MacPro7,1 Servers

Symptoms:
An attempt to patch/upgrade VMware ESXi 6.7.0 via VUM or CLI on an Apple Inc. MacPro7,1 Server fails with a PSOD.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

ESXi will reassign resources for MacPro if BIOS doesn't assign resource for bridges or assigns wrong resources.
When doing this, bridge's resource needs to be assigned from root bridge's resource window.

Resolution

Currently, there is no resolution.

Workaround:
This issue can be work around by adding boot option pciExperimentalFlags -v 1 by running the following command over a SSH session:
esxcli system settings kernel set -s pciExperimentalFlags -v 1

Note: This needs to be run before the patch/upgrade process. It will take effect after patch/upgrade is complete and host reboots.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
No impact.