SLES 10 64bit virtual machine becomes unresponsive with the error: The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• A SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 64bit virtual machine with multiple virtual CPUs becomes unresponsive
• You see the error:
  
  The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system
  
  
• To recover, you have to reset or reboot the virtual machine
• The vmware.log file for the affected virtual machine shows a message similar to:
  
  vcpu-0| Msg_Hint: msg.monitorevent.halt (sent)
  vcpu-0| The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. You will need to power off or reset the virtual machine at this point.
  vmx| VMXRequestReset
  vmx| Stopping VCPU threads...

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable

Resolution

This issue occurs with the following Linux kernel versions:

• kernel-smp-2.6.16-60-0.27
• kernel-smp-2.6.16-60-0.30
• kernel-smp-2.6.16-60-0.33

Note: This issue can also occur on Redhat virtual machines with these kernel versions.

This is not an ESX issue.

To resolve this issue, upgrade the virtual machine SLES kernel to kernel-smp-2.6.16-60-0.34 or later.