ESXi 6.7 PSOD with qfle3 driver version above 1.0.69.1

Had a ESXi PSOD today. That does not happened that often, so I was quite surprised to find out that it was not a hardware related issue that was the root cause.

VMware did an analysis of the memory dump, and it turned out to be a faulty driver. That made sense since the PSOD often comes from drivers og agents when it is not a hardware issue.

The PSOD i got was the following:

#PF Exception 14 in World xxxxxxx:vmnicX-pollw IP xxxxxxxxxx addr xxxxxxxx
Continue reading ESXi 6.7 PSOD with qfle3 driver version above 1.0.69.1

Error: cannot install the vcenter agent service. cannot upload agent after vCSA upgrade

I was just updating a vCenter server and some ESXi hosts, but after running the vCenter update I found vCenter full of HA Agent install fails. To stop this fail loop, I turned off VMware HA while figuring out what was wrong.

Error: cannot install the vcenter agent service. cannot upload agent after vCSA upgrade
Continue reading Error: cannot install the vcenter agent service. cannot upload agent after vCSA upgrade

Update Manager ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so driver conflict

Just provisioned the HPE ESXi 6.7 Update 3 custom OEM image onto some HP DL560 Gen10 servers.

After I updated the servers using update manager and the HPE vibsdepot I ran into problems. Turns out there is a conflict between the VMware provided driver and the HPE provided driver.

The result is that I cannot install all updates to satisfy compliance.

Checking the esxupdate.log file on the ESXi hosts I get the following error:

ValueError: VIBs ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 and ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so_12.0.1108.0-03 have unequal values of the 'payloads' attribute: '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1602.936 KB]' != '[elx-esx-libelxi: 1493.833 KB]'
Continue reading Update Manager ELX_bootbank_elx-esx-libelxima.so driver conflict

vSAN – Downgrading NVMe driver in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

Recently ran into a HPE Proliant m510 server running vSAN, where vSAN complained that the controller driver for the NVMe disk where too new.

The health error said that the current driver nvme (1.2.2.17.-1vmw.670.1.28.10302608) was to new and the recommended driver was nvme (1.2.1.34-1vmw.670.0.08169922)

Downgrading is not always a breeze. When going to VMware compatibility guide, the NVMe disk is supported for vSAN 6.7 Update 1, and there are no download links to a specific driver, so how do you get the old driver? Continue reading vSAN – Downgrading NVMe driver in ESXi 6.7 Update 1

ESXi 6.5 Update 1 PSOD on HPE 460c Gen9 after Ixgben driver update

Today I upgraded a customer to ESXi 6.5 Update 1, but unfortunately some of them ended up purple screening at reboot after they were updated.

Affected Servers so far

  • HPE BL460c Gen9
  • HPE DL360p Gen8 (Reported by anonymous user)
  • HPE DL380 Gen9 (Reported by Bernhard)
  • HPE DL380 Gen8 (Reported by Ralf)
  • HPE DL380p Gen9 (Reported by Victor)

PSOD Error

PSOD: #PF Exception 14 in world 68297:sfcb-intelcim IP 0x41801b704d8f addr 0x443919649c000

Continue reading ESXi 6.5 Update 1 PSOD on HPE 460c Gen9 after Ixgben driver update