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A13x
Hot Shot
Hot Shot
‎05-12-2022 03:35 AM

Random Freezes after updating DELL BIOS to 2.14 + ESXi 7 U3d

I seem to have a strange one, hosts are randomly freezing / locking up (not crashing or PSOD) after updating the DELL BIOS to 2.14 with either the VMware or DELL 7 U3d image (VMware ESXi, 7.0.3, 19482537)

Is anyone experiencing any strangeness?

Downgrading the host back to 2.13 seems to have brought most of the stability back but unsure how a BIOS update could cause this. Nothing in the logs to provide any hints as to why this is occurring and it seems to be more frequent on some hosts than others (all running same hardware).

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4 Replies
Greg-Blackwell
Contributor
Contributor
‎05-13-2022 07:14 AM

Having the same issue. Nothing in the logs, just freezes. Support advised to roll back and it seams to be stable. 

I would like more information as to what causes this?

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damoos
Contributor
Contributor
‎05-14-2022 06:06 PM

Exact same issue running 6.7U3. A total lockup/freeze on multiple occasions but only on certain servers. 

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matthewfisher
Contributor
Contributor
‎06-28-2022 09:41 PM

This is a known issue. DELLEMC have recalled BIOS 2.14.0 on specific platforms. The issue apparently relates to a microcode update in the 2.14 release not playing well with Intel E5-26xx v4 CPUs. There is apparently a replacement BIOS on the way that will correct the issue. In the meantime the current mitigation is to roll back to 2.13 which you seem to have already performed.

 https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-au/000197971/dsa-2022-015-dell-poweredge-improper-smm-communic...

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seatosky
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-06-2022 06:05 AM

We’re having this issue with Hyper-V hosts and the 2.14.0 bios. Dell just released 2.15.0 so we’re going to try that.

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