VM hanged due to a problem with the virtual CPU

[tkmanh]

Hello,

Has anyone faced to the following issue?

I'm using ESXi 5.0. I have many VMs run on this ESXi host. There is a VM hanged 2 times this month. I had to reboot it from vSphere Client console.

I saw this strange event message in the event tab of ESXi host for this VM:

Error Stack:

Click OK to restart the virtual machine or Cancel to power off the virtual machine. A fault has occurred causing a virtual CPU to enter the shutdown state. If this fault had occurred outside of a virtual machine, it would have caused the physical machine to restart. The shutdown state can be reached by incorrectly configuring the virtual machine, a bug in the guest operating system, or a problem in VMware ESX.

Thanks!

[Jayden56]

Hi

Welcome to communities.

All vm or only few vm , if all then might be problem with cpu

If only few vm reduce the number of cpu and check .

[tkmanh]

Hi Jayden,

Only this VM. Why did you recommend to reduce the number of CPU on this VM?

Since about 6 months ago, this VM got high load on CPU performance, so I increased to 4 vCPU.

[JPM300]

How many CPU's and cores on those CPU's do your hosts have?

This could also be a bad memory DIM in that particular CPU bank.  Check your hosts integrated hardare logs to see if there is anything flagging there as well.

[admin]

What is the guest OS?

[tkmanh]

Hi jmattson,

It's Windows XP SP2

[admin]

Please post the vmware.log file for the VM.

[tkmanh]

Please see the vmware.log file in attachment.

[tkmanh]

The problem occured most recently on Jun 10, 2014.

[admin]

This could be Intel erratum BD132.  (See http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/specification-updates/xeon-5600-specification-update.pdf).  When did you last update the BIOS on this system?

Though you are not experiencing a PSOD, your problem could be related to the issue discussed in http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2033780.  If you have not already done so, you should apply one of the fixes for this problem (BIOS patch or ESXi 5.0 patch).

[tkmanh]

But only one VM on the ESXi host stops responding, not the ESXi host. The link on VMware KB states that is applied to the ESXi host fail.

[admin]

tkmanh wrote:

But only one VM on the ESXi host stops responding, not the ESXi host. The link on VMware KB states that is applied to the ESXi host fail.

That is why I said, "Though you are not experiencing a PSOD..." I provided the KB article as a reference, because it happens to contain the corrective actions required for Intel erratum BD132, regardless of the symptoms you are experiencing.  For a complete list of symptoms, please note the following text from the Intel erratum, rather than the text of the KB article:

This erratum may result in unexpected faults, an uncorrectable TLB error logged in IA32_MCi_STATUS.MCACOD (bits [15:0]) with a value of 0000_0000_0001_xxxxb (where x stands for 0 or 1), a guest or hypervisor crash, or other unpredictable system behavior.

If you have PAE enabled in this guest (or any other 32-bit Windows XP guest on this system), this problem could potentially be a result of this erratum.  Then again, it could be something else entirely.

In any event, if you are at risk for Intel erratum BD132, I would suggest that you take the actions recommended in the aforementioned KB article.

[tkmanh]

Hi jmattson, Rubeck,

Thank you very much for your explanation.

So these steps I should try:

1. Upgrade BIOS for the ESXi host

or 2. Install patch for the ESXi host to disable Intel FlexPriority

or 3. Upgrade the guest OS to higher than Windows XP SP2 32-bit

What step above should I try the most? Or I should try all?

I still have one question: What feature or something else will be affected if I disable Intel FlexPriority?

Thanks!

[admin]

Disabling FlexPriority will result in a performance degradation for some applications.  I would recommend a BIOS update as the best solution for erratum BD132.  Note, however, that this may not solve your problem.

Is this guest (or any Windows XP VM on this host) configured to use PAE?

[tkmanh]

Yes jmattson. The guest is configured to use PAE.

So the best solution is to upgrade the guest OS to higher than Windows XP SP2 32-bit?

[admin]

No, as long as you are using PAE in a Windows 32-bit guest, you are potentially subject to the Intel erratum.

The best solution is to upgrade your BIOS.

[tkmanh]

If I disable the PAE on the guest, does it solve the problem? Since the memory set for the guest is < 4GB, it doesn't need PAE enabled.

[admin]

If you do not use PAE for any 32-bit Windows XP or 32-bit Windows 2003 VMs, then you should not be subject  to erratum BD132.  This would be a good first step, but it may not solve your problem.

[tkmanh]

Yes, thank you very much for your help!

[Rubeck]

FYI:

From the vmware.log it looks like a Windows XP 32 bit version..   According to VMware's HCL the 32 bit version of Windows XP SP2 isn't supported on ESXi 5... only the 64 bit is.

You would need to be running SP3 if you want to be runnning in a supported config...

/Rubeck