Error: USB_ERR_TIMEOUT leading to vSwitchBMC connectivity loss on HPE Gen12 servers

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

HPE Gen12 servers running VMware ESXi 8.x experience intermittent network connectivity loss on the vSwitchBMC virtual switch. The physical adapter vusb0 detaches from the system, leading to management alarms.

• vCenter Server reports: Lost network connectivity on virtual switch "vSwitchBMC". Physical NIC vusb0 is down.
• The vmkernel.log file contains the following error sequence:
  

  vmkusb: usbd_setup_device_desc: getting device descriptor failed, USB_ERR_TIMEOUT
  vmkusb: usb_alloc_device: set address failed
  vmkusb: uhub_reattach_port: could not allocate new device
  DMA Engine 'vusb0-dma-engine' destroyed.

• The issue typically reoccurs every 2 to 10 days and is temporarily resolved by a host reboot.

Environment

• VMware ESXi 8.x
• VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x
• HPE ProLiant Gen12 Servers

Cause

The HPE Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) controller experiences a hardware-level timeout or reset of the internal USB interface. This causes the EHCI host controller transactions to fail, resulting in ESXi tearing down the vusb0 uplink as the device is no longer present on the bus.

Resolution

This is a third-party hardware issue. Engage HPE Support to investigate iLO firmware stability and EHCI controller performance.

Workaround:

To stop the connectivity alarms and remove the orphaned virtual switch, follow these steps:

1. Disable the Virtual NIC feature within the server's iLO management interface.
2. Run the following command on the ESXi host to prevent the automatic recreation of the BMC network: esxcfg-advcfg -s 0 /Net/BMCNetworkEnable
3. Remove the orphaned virtual switch: esxcli network vswitch standard remove -v vSwitchBMC

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Additional Information

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