VMware ESXi 8.0.3 fails with a purple diagnostic screen Exception 14 in osfsd-nvvol

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

A VMware ESXi host fails with a purple diagnostic screen (PSOD). The screen displays a Page Fault (#PF Exception 14) with the faulting world identified as 2413437:osfsd-nvvol. The faulting address is 0x248 (Null Pointer Dereference context) and involves the nfsclient and osfs modules.

The stack trace indicates a kernel panic during an attempt to mount an Object Space File System (OSFS) volume, which relies on the NFS client infrastructure. The execution flow shows the failure occurring during a cleanup routine:

OSFSVsi_MountChildSet -> OSFS_MountChild
FSS_MountVolume
NFSVolume_Mount
NFSMountFailedCleanup
NFSSched_FreeMPE
NFSSched_GetSchedInfo

Environment

• VMware ESXi 8.0.3 [Releasebuild-25429389 x86_64]
• Third-party Object Space File System (OSFS) or vVols/NFS storage

Cause

This issue is caused by an unhandled exception or race condition in the nfsclient module during a mount failure cleanup. The system encounters an invalid memory address while attempting to release scheduling resources for a failed OSFS/NFS mount.

Resolution

This is a third-party issue related to storage compatibility with VMware ESXi 8.0 U3 and the third-party NFS client or OSFS/vVols. To resolve this issue, contact your storage vendor to correct the underlying connectivity drop, compatibility limitation, or bug.

Additional Information

To assist your storage vendor with diagnostics, perform the following next steps:

• Extract the vmkernel.log from the core dump bundle to identify the specific NFS or vVols/OSFS datastore that failed to mount prior to the crash.
• Review the storage fabric and network infrastructure for underlying latency or connectivity drops that initiated the NFSVolume_Mount failure.
• Check for specific storage vendor advisories regarding OSFS/vVols compatibility with VMware ESXi 8.0 U3, as well as known issues tied to osfsd-nvvol interactions.