Hostd is crashing while the cloning operation starts on VSAN datastore

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Hostd is crashing while the cloning operation starts, and it fails with the below error:

"An error occurred while communicating with the remote host"

• The following error can be observed in the ESXi host logs under /var/run/log/hostd.log:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ panic hostd[51026339] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=xxxxxx-xxxx user=vpxuser:xxxx
-->
--> Panic: VERIFY bora/lib/nfclib/nfcFileDsk.c:1103
-->
--> Backtrace:
--> [backtrace begin] product: VMware ESX, version: 7.0.3, build: build-23794027, tag: hostd, cpu: x86_64, os: esx, buildType: release
--> backtrace[00] libvmacore.so[0x001D6812]: Vmacore::System::Stacktrace::CaptureFullWork(unsigned int)
--> backtrace[01] libvmacore.so[0x001BD35D]: Vmacore::System::SystemFactory::CreateBacktrace(Vmacore::Ref<Vmacore::System::Backtrace>&)
--> backtrace[02] libvmacore.so[0x003E64AB]
--> backtrace[03] libvmacore.so[0x003E6584]: Vmacore::PanicExit(char const*)
--> backtrace[04] libvmacore.so[0x0018622C]
--> backtrace[05] libvmacore.so[0x001862CA]
--> backtrace[06] libvmsnapshot.so[0x00088F13]
--> backtrace[07] libvmsnapshot.so[0x0008A7A5]

 

• The failure is at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcFileDsk.c:1103 per the stack:
  #5  0x000000037114bf13 in NfcFileDskReadMetaData (h=0x3825acca0, buf=buf@entry=0x387f00018 "ﾭ\336\016", size=size@entry=262136) at bora/lib/nfclib/nfcFileDsk.c:1103

hostd.0.gz:2025-02-20T10:47:04.167Z warning hostd[51032881] [Originator@6876 sub=Libs opID=xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxx user=vpxuser] [NFC WARNING]NfcValidateNfcCreateParam: Policy and SPIF spec list passed is null, setting NFC_CONV_KEEP_FILTERS.

Environment

vSphere ESXi 7.0.3

Cause

This is a known bug in the DBEnum/DBGet workflow.

On the NFC side, we should not see panic in the release build on this DDB issue, it should just return an error instead.

 

Resolution

• The issue is fixed in the version below:
  • ESXi 8.0 Update 3 (to download, go to Download Broadcom products and software)
  • ESX 9.0 (to download, go to Download Broadcom products and software)