Virtual Machine vmx Process Crash with Signal 11 During Zerto Backup SCSI Hot-Add

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Virtual machines experience recurring vSphere High Availability (HA) restarts due to a vmx process crash (Signal 11 / Segmentation Fault) during backup operations. This panic occurs specifically during SCSI disk Hot-Add/Hot-Remove operations initiated by the backup software on the ESXi host.

Error messages observed in the vmware.log associated with the affected virtual machine
Er(02) vcpu-0 - DISKLIB-LIB_MISC : DiskLib_GetObjectId: expecting 1 link; got 3 Wa(03) vcpu-0 - DISKLIB-LIB_SIDECAR : DiskLibSidecarOpenInt: Failed to get objID associated with disk: One of the parameters supplied is invalid Wa(03) vcpu-0 - Caught signal 11 -- tid 3006271 (addr C) Cr(01) vcpu-0 - PANIC: Unexpected signal: 11.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.0.3 Build 25429389
Zerto Storage Filter Plugin (zdriverFilterC)

Cause

The crash is caused by the Zerto storage filter plugin (zdriverFilterC) intercepting and mishandling SCSI disk hot-add/hot-remove operations during backup tasks.
The driver encounters an unhandled exception when attempting to parse partial snapshot chains and sidecar object IDs. This directly results in a segmentation fault (null pointer dereference) in the hypervisor's underlying vmx execution thread (vcpu-0).

Resolution

Engage Zerto Technical Support and provide the generated core files (vmx-zdump.xxx) so they can confirm the failing instruction within their filter plugin and provide a permanent fix. Refer: Support for Zerto Solutions