Host alarms regarding pqisrc_heartbeat_timer_handler

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Host alarms related to "smartpqi01: pqisrc_heartbeat_timer_handler:0171: Handler called early at time xx:xx:32, instead of expected time xx:xx:33"

Symptoms:

'pqisrc_heartbeat_timer_handler' alerts are observed even when there is no step correction of the system clock by NTP.
NTP configuration has been validated as per Troubleshooting NTP on ESX and ESXi 6.x / 7.x / 8.x and found NTP to be correctly set up.

Environment

VMware vSphere 7.x
VMware vSphere 8.x

Cause

Alert message from smartpqi driver, "Handler called early at time ..., instead of expected time ...", appears in log because controller's heartbeat timer handler is triggered slightly earlier than the expected 10-second interval. This early triggering occurs due to minor timing discrepancies in the system clock or variations in CPU scheduling, causing timer to fire before the full timeout period elapses.

However, this behavior does not impact the controller's functionality or performance.

Resolution

Broadcom engineering team is actively working with Microchip Vendor to reduce log urgency and is planning to release a change in in-box/async driver.

At this time, there is no estimated timeline for the release.

Additional Information

This log messages are harmless and can be ignored. However, removing them is not easy because the log is hard-coded at the ALERT level by SmartPQI driver. Since this is an asynchronous driver (built and shipped by Microchip), modifying log level requires Microchip to implement change and release a new version of driver.