Storage path failover might cause kernel panic in Linux kernels if using a virtual LSILogic adapter (Parallel or SAS)

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

A storage path failover might cause a kernel panic if you are using a virtual LSILogic adapter. The cause of this is a defect that leads to a race condition in the adapter's driver. This failure has been reproduced in the RHEL5.1 64bit, RHEL5.0-5.3, and SLES 10 Linux releases, but other releases might also be affected. C ontact your operating system vendor to determine if the Linux release you are using has this issue and obtain a patch, if necessary.

Environment

VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Resolution

There are several possible solutions for this issue. You can:

• Configure the virtual machine to use a different HBA: BusLogic (available for 32bit only), PVSCSI (but does not support booting), or IDE.
• Configure the virtual machine to use the LSILogic SAS HBA instead of the Parallel, which is less likely to encounter this failure.
• Increase the timeout for commands in the guest operating system. VMware Tools installation can increase timeouts for commands to 180 seconds. This change can be also made manually by running the following command (where 180 is the requested timeout) each time the system starts, for a in /sys/class/scsi_generic/*/device/timeout; do echo 180 > "$a"; done