ESXi 5.1 Purple screen

[bkrenzkeCFI]

One of our hosts crashed today with a purple screen.  It's version 5.1, the message starts with PF Exception 14 in world<guest ID>.  I understand this version is not longer supported, I can't open a case on it.  I looked up the error, the cause looked very general to me, it's either hardware or software.  I plan to see if I can download the dump file, though at the end of the purple screen it said it was a partial dump it ran out of space. 

The host booted up fine, all the VMs booted up, I didn't try booting the one listed in the PSOD since I don't need it right now. 

I'm checking here to see if anyone can point me in a direction to see why this host crashed and if there's anything we can do to prevent it while we work on migrating off of it.

Thanks,

-Ben

[daphnissov]

You're so long out of a supported position it's incredible. GSS are the ones with the tools necessary to decode crash dumps for PSODs, but that's obviously not an option for you. But since you've provided essentially no details (best would have been a screenshot showing the PSOD), we really can't help here. If it's not already clear, assuming this is for business/production usage, your first order of business is to upgrade from that ancient version if, for no other reasons, than to get support in these types of situations.

[bkrenzkeCFI]

Thanks for your reply.  I attached the PSOD.  This is for a business.  I'm not honestly expecting much from this, as you says its a very old version, I can't get TAC for it.  We are planning to migrate to a newer version but it won't happen today.   If, in the meantime, I can do something to this host then I would like to try.

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

Only thing to recommend at this time is to bring that old host fully up-to-date with regard to patches. The build number you have suggests U1 while the latest release for the 5.1 version was U3 patch 9 (build 3872664). So update the host to that build and see if the PSOD still happens.

[IRIX201110141]

This is the one and only PSOD which everybody knows about.

VMware Knowledge Base

Regards,
Joerg

[bkrenzkeCFI]

Very helpful suggestions, thank you.  I'll have to weigh the updating vs migrating, it may make sense to put that on if we aren't getting it migrated soon enough.  I did find a couple VMs that still had e1000 NICs, I've removed them, that may help too.