ESXi host incurs Purple Screen of Death (PSOD) "Usage error in dlmalloc" during vMotion in high-density container environments.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• After vMotion of container pods (VM's), the destination ESXi host host will enter PSOD. 
• From the vmkernel logs, you see similar to below:
  PANIC bora/vmkernel/main/dlmalloc.c:4933 - Usage error in dlmalloc' from var/core/vmkernel.zdump logs.
  
  

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0 

Cause

• During vMotion, the ESXi host will quiesce the VM in order to save its network configuration so it can be matched on the destination ESXi host. 
• Within an environment hosting a large number of container pods the configuration save process attempts to access network port information that the pause/quiesce process had already deleted, resulting in a PSOD. 
  
  

Resolution

Resolved in ESXi 8.0 Update 3j (ESXi 8.0 P09)