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.
• The following error may be seen: The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system
• 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 vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.x

 

 

 

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 Red Hat Linux virtual machines with the above kernel versions.

Resolution:

This is not a vSphere issue.

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