Virtual machine hypervisor halt with NMI_HARDWARE_FAILURE (80) due to underlying hardware fault

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

You may experience a critical hypervisor halt. When suspending the virtual machine to capture the .vmss and .vmem files, a review of the resulting memory dump via WinDBG reveals the following failure and arguments:

NMI_HARDWARE_FAILURE (80)
This is typically due to a hardware malfunction. The hardware supplier should
be called.
Arguments:
Arg1: 00000000004f4454, 'TDO'

Additionally, the following signature string is observed, indicating a critical hypervisor halt caused by an underlying CPU hardware fault or microcode exception:
0x80_4F4454_GenuineIntel_NOERRREC_IMAGE_GenuineIntel.sys

Environment

vCenter 8.0U3
VMware virtual machines

Cause

The system experienced a Non-Maskable Interrupt (NMI) triggered by a hardware malfunction. The NOERRREC flag within the signature analysis denotes that hardware error recovery was not possible at the hypervisor level.

Resolution

This issue indicates an underlying physical hardware fault rather than a VMware software defect. To resolve this:

1. Contact your hardware supplier immediately to perform hardware diagnostics and repair.
2. Provide your hardware supplier with the memory dump analysis and the NMI_HARDWARE_FAILURE signature to assist with their investigation.