ESXi 6.5 U2 does not trigger an alarm when a physical component encounters a hardware failure

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The ESXi host is running 6.5 Update 2 or earlier
• A physical component such as a memory DIMM or a battery is confirmed to be encountering a hardware failure and the alerting functionality on the physical host layer is correctly detecting the problem
• The ESXi host client and vCenter Server shows the component status as green indicating it is functioning correctly
• An alarm is not triggered in vSphere
• Within hostd.log the sensor status shows all components reported as green:

2019-01-01T20:59:20.314Z info hostd[E881B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.ha-eventmgr] Event 37 : Hardware Sensor Status: Processor green, Memory green, Fan green, Voltage green, Temperature green, Power green, System Board green, Battery green, Storage green, Other green

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5

Cause

This issue occurs due to a known issue with the hardware sensor state calculation in ESXi.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in ESXi 6.5 Update 3 and later, available at VMware Downloads.