Guest VM crashing with High Virtual machine CPU usage alert

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• Customers face issues with the guest OS is crashing on VMs running Windows Server 2022. Randomly the guest VMs are crashing with High VM CPU.
• The hardware is not reporting any errors and there is enough capacity on hosts. This issue is specifically related to ESXi hosts running on AMD CPU architecture.
• The issue is seen on infrastructures running on ESXi version prior to VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2b.
• In the guest OS memory dump we see the following:

   // bugcheck code
   0: kd> !analyze -show
   SECURE_KERNEL_ERROR (18b)
   The secure kernel has encountered a fatal error.
   Arguments:
   Arg1: 000000000000018c  // Hyperguard violation
   Arg2: 000000000000100b  // A processor mode misconfiguration
   Arg3: 0000000000000000
   Arg4: 000000000000409b

 

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 2a and earlier.

Resolution

Issue is resolved in ESXi version 8.0 Update 2b and later. To download https://support.broadcom.com/group/ecx/productfiles?displayGroup=VMware%20vSphere%20-%20Standard&release=8.0&os=&servicePk=202631&language=EN&groupId=204419&viewGroup=true

 

For more details refer to the release notes : https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/373456/guest-vm-crashing-with-high-virtual-mach.html

 

Additional Information