ESXi host fails with PSOD during VM operations on VVOL datastore.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

ESXi host fails with PSOD during VM operations like vMotion, backup, etc. of VMs backed by VVOL datastore.

The PSOD screen displays the VM name which causes the PSOD. Example:

VMware ESXi 8.0.2 [Releasebuild-23825572 x86_64
#PF Exception 14 in world <id>:vmx-vthread- IP 0x####### addr 0x0
PTEs:0x########;0x#######;0x0;

Module(s) involved in panic: [vvol Version 1.0, Built on: May 8 2024]
...
...dump data removed....
...
*PCPU##:########/vmx-vthread-645:<VMNAME>
PCPU 0: ####
PCPU #: ####
Code Start: 0x## VMK uptime: ##:##:##:##.###
0x##########:[0x#########]VVolloctlHandler$(vvol)#<None>#
0x##########:[0x#########]VVolloctl@(vvol)#<None>#
0x##########:[0x#########]DevFSIoctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]FSSVec_Ioctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]FSSObjectIoctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]FSS_IoctlByFH@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]UserFileIoctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]UserVmfs_Ioctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]LinuxFileDesc_Ioctl@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]User_LinuxSyscallHandler@vmkernel#
0x##########:[0x#########]gate_entry@vmkernel#
...

Environment

vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

This is caused by a rare race condition between the VMX process terminating while VM has some other operations like vMotion, backup, snapshots, etc running.

This issue is identified as a known issue in ESXi 8.x.

Resolution

This issue is fixed in ESXi version 8.0 Update 3 P05, Release notes, Build 24674464

ESXi Build numbers and versions