Virtual machine fails unexpectedly after a snapshot consolidation task

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Cause

This issues occurs in virtual machines running on ESXi 5.5 Update 3 and occurs due to a segmentation fault when changing the snapshot tree data-structure.

Resolution

This issue of virtual machine failing after a snapshot consolidation task is resolved in ESXi 5.5 Update 3a hosts.

To download ESXi 5.5 Update 3a, go to VMware Downloads.

To work around this issue when you do not want to upgrade:

• Downgrade the ESXi host(s) to a previous version.
• Consolidate the snapshot(s) with the virtual machine powered off.
• For larger environments where reverting all hosts is not feasible:

1. Revert a subset of the ESXi hosts to a previous version.
2. Migrate critical virtual machines to the downgraded hosts.
3. Create DRS Affinity rules to keep the virtual machines from migrating to the affected ESXi hosts. For more information see the Using DRS Affinity Rules section in the vSphere Resource Management guide.
4. Disable non-critical virtual machines from any backup solutions.

Additional Information

In the vmware.log file, you see entries similar to:

[YYYY-MM-DD]<time>Z| vcpu-0| I120: SNAPSHOT: SnapshotDiskTreeFind: Detected node change from 'scsi0:1' to 'snapshot0.disk1.node'.
[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+0.000]| vcpu-0| W110: Caught signal 11 -- tid 1272281 (addr 98)</time></time>

[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+0.000]| vcpu-0| I120: SymBacktrace[2] 000003ffc9110640 rip=000000000031300f
[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+0.000]| vcpu-0| I120: Unexpected signal: 11.

[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+9.079]| vcpu-0| I120:</time></time></time> Msg_Post: Error
[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+9.079]| vcpu-0| I120: [msg.log.error.unrecoverable] VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0)
[YYYY-MM-DD] <time>Z[+9.079]| vcpu-0| I120+ Unexpected signal: 11.</time></time>

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

Locating virtual machine log files on an ESXi/ESX host
Reverting to a previous version of ESXi
快照整合任务结束后虚拟机出现意外故障
スナップショット統合タスクの後で仮想マシンが予期せず失敗する