On ESXi 8.0.2 and 8.0.3 , you will see the below alert reported for the Mellanox driver:
"nmlx5_QueryNicVportContext:188 command failed: IO was aborted"
The vmkernel logs will show the below entries at random times:
<NMLX_ERR> nmlx5_core: 0000:45:00.0: Health: Miss counters detected.
<NMLX_INF> synd 0x0: unrecognized error
<NMLX_INF> extSynd 0x0000
<NMLX_ERR> nmlx5_QueryNicVportContext:188 command failed: IO was aborted
<NMLX_ERR> nmlx5_QueryVportCounter:1851 command failed: IO was aborted
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.2
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.3
This is known bug in the nmlx5 health mechanism logic where the driver incorrectly detects NIC is in faulty state.
VCF Broadcom Engineering Team is aware of this issue and a resolution is expected in a future release.