ESXi host running virtual machines with GPU hardware acceleration enabled experiences a PSOD

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
You see these issues on hosts running virtual machines with GPU hardware acceleration enabled:

• The ESXi host fails with a purple diagnostic screen
• You see a backtrace similar to:

2018-01-01T04:02:47.314Z cpu30:151903)NVRM: VM: nv_alloc_system_pages: failed to allocate memory
2018-01-01T04:02:47.322Z cpu30:151542)NVRM: map pages vmk_Map failure: Failure
2018-01-01T04:02:47.322Z cpu30:151542)NVRM: failed to map pages!
2018-01-01T04:02:47.322Z cpu30:151542)NVRM: kernel mapping failed: Failure
2018-01-01T04:02:47.322Z cpu30:151542)NVRM: VM: nv_alloc_system_pages: failed to allocate memory
2018-01-01T04:02:47.513Z cpu39:151793)NVRM: kernel mapping failed: Failure
2018-01-01T04:02:47.513Z cpu39:151793)NVRM: VM: nv_alloc_system_pages: failed to allocate memory
2018-01-01T04:02:47.821Z cpu13:33232)World: 9757: PRDA 0x418043400000 ss 0x0 ds 0x10b es 0x10b fs 0x10b gs 0x0
2018-01-01T04:02:47.821Z cpu13:33232)World: 9759: TR 0x4020 GDT 0x439462921000 (0x402f) IDT 0x4180050ca000 (0xfff)
2018-01-01T04:02:47.821Z cpu13:33232)World: 9760: CR0 0x80010031 CR3 0x1027a72000 CR4 0x42768
2018-01-01T04:02:47.859Z cpu13:33232)Backtrace for current CPU #13, worldID=33232, rbp=0xd
2018-01-01T04:02:47.859Z cpu13:33232)0x43914e81b720:[0x41800501883b]PageCacheRemoveFirstPageLocked@vmkernel#nover+0x2f stack: 0x4305dd30
2018-01-01T04:02:47.859Z cpu13:33232)0x43914e81b740:[0x418005019144]PageCacheAdjustSize@vmkernel#nover+0x260 stack: 0x0, 0x3cb418317a909
2018-01-01T04:02:47.859Z cpu13:33232)0x43914e81bfd0:[0x41800521746e]CpuSched_StartWorld@vmkernel#nover+0xa2 stack: 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0, 0
2018-01-01T04:02:47.877Z cpu13:33232)^[[45m^[[33;1mVMware ESXi 6.0.0 [Releasebuild-6921384 x86_64]^[[0m
#GP Exception 13 in world 33232:memMap-13 @ 0x41800501883b

 
Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.
 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue occurs due to exhausted xmap  and xmap allocation failure resulting in ESXi host PSOD

Resolution

This is a known issue affecting ESXi 6.0.

Currently, there is no resolution.