PSOD core dump is encrypted

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

After an ESXi host has encountered a PSOD the core dump was found to be encrypted. 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x and later versions

Cause

This is expected behavior if the environment uses vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption 

Resolution

This is documented here 

vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption and Core Dumps

If your environment uses vSphere Virtual Machine Encryption, and if an error occurs on the ESXi host, the resulting core dump is encrypted to protect customer data. Core dumps that are included in the vm-support package are also encrypted.