vvold crashing and vMotion failures after upgrading to ESXi 8.0 Update 3

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms: 

• You are using Virtual Volumes Datastores (VVOLs)
• You see the following messages the vobd.log on the ESXi host(s) frequently: 

2025-09-26T17:07:38.066Z PBIWATESX028 vobd[2098054]: [vmsyslogd@6876 msgModified="sF+uT" remoteHostMaxMsgLen="480" originalMsgLen="499"] [UserWorldCorrelator] 611443771794us: [esx.problem.application.core.dumped.encrypted] An application (/bin/vvold) running on ESXi host has crashed (1 time(s) so far). An encrypted core file using keyId vmware:key/fqid/<VMWARE-NULL>/WATCARD%2dNKP/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

• You may also experience vMotion failures after one of these process crashes. 
• You recently installed or upgraded ESXi 8.0 Update 3

Environment

• VMware ESXi 8.0

Cause

• This is a known issue VMware ESXi 8.0 Update 3

Resolution

• There is currently no workaround available.
• This expected to be fixed in a forthcoming update.