Intermitted freeze of 6.7.0U3 ESXI host

[mrwee]

Hi,

Having build a new lab server with:

Gigabyte C246M-WU4 Motherboard

128GB Corsair RAM

Intel Xeon E-2176G CPU

Samsung 970 PRO NVMe SSD

Fresh install of ESXI 6.7.0 Update 3 (free version)

I often experience that the host completely freezes with the black/white screen also frozen. No VM's are running, no ping/login to host. Num Lock doesn't work. F2 doesn't work. Everything has freezed.

I know that only the chipset + CPU are on the compatbility list, but I figured that if ESXI could run off an old HP laptop, then why not this machine.

Any suggestions to, how to find the root cause of the freezes? I'd really hate having to change to virtualbox

[mrwee]

Still struggling with this problem. Have checked all the hardware, but ESXI still completely freezes/stops. Can't F2/Alt-F2 on the console. No log entries at the time the freeze occurs. Is there any way I can troubleshoot this with ESXI? Read that a serial port connection might be used?

[russsa]

I have been having the same problem. Have tried many things. I don't have a confirmed solution yet, but someone on reddit recently told me they were seeing th esame issue when they had any networks using the vmxnet3 adapter. Try changing it maybe? I changed mine and can update in a few days if the hard locking stopped. Best of luck.

[Tarabee]

Is changing the network adapter fix your problem? recently come up with the same problem

[nachogonzalez]

Can you share the vmkernel.log output?
This kind of issues re expected when you are out of compatibility matrix.

[Tarabee]

nachogonzalez, please kindly refer to the attached vmkernel.log file. Looking forward for you kind assistance. Thank you.

[nachogonzalez]

I see a few errors, on one of the first lines there is an APD state (all paths down to a storage device)
but, what i think is causing the issues is this:

2020-11-27T05:35:36.286Z cpu1:2097569)ScsiDeviceIO: 9777: Get VPD 86 Inquiry for device "naa.6b8ca3a0ef0ab60022ce1aee0ca031b6" from Plugin "NMP" failed. Not supported
2020-11-27T05:35:36.286Z cpu1:2097569)ScsiDeviceIO: 8461: Could not detect setting of QErr for device naa.6b8ca3a0ef0ab60022ce1aee0ca031b6. Error Not supported.


Your Multipath plugins are failing

Please check that all your hardware setup is on compatibility matrix and download latest drivers/firmware

[Tarabee]

nachogonzalez

Thanks for your reply, especially on the error logs. I've check the compatibility matrix and notice that R715 is not compatible to ESXi .6.7.0 seemed, I need to downgrade to 6.0

[nachogonzalez]

As far as I see your setup is not enterprise or server class hardware.
You might be able to run without issues if you upload drivers manually.