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Niklas974
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-09-2022 02:56 AM

virtualized ESXi 7.0 cannot start VMs

For a Test, I'm running ESXi 7.0 Update 3 inside a QEMU/KVM Machine on a Linux host.

On ESXi, I tried starting both Linux (e.g. Ubuntu 21.10) and Windows VMs, both fail to boot.

Linux will kernel panic.
Windows will BSOD, showing "KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED"

I have read all available ESXi log files but have not found any indication on whats going on.

I have a second ESXi Host (7.0 Update 2), on which the same machines work flawlessly.

Can anyone please point me in the right direction about whats going on?

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2 Replies
SCIJLW
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-09-2022 08:18 AM

Well, I can't even get my ESXi host to start on KVM without a PSOD, so you are much further, but I suspect it's the same thing with the CPU model and how it's being presented to ESXi.

Niklas974
Contributor
Contributor
‎03-10-2022 02:14 AM

Thank you!

I worked with a colleague and set the following cpu features in QEMU/KVM:

<cpu mode="custom" match="exact" check="full">
<model fallback="forbid">Haswell-noTSX-IBRS</model>
<vendor>Intel</vendor>
<feature policy="require" name="vme"/>
<feature policy="require" name="ss"/>
<feature policy="require" name="vmx"/>
<feature policy="require" name="f16c"/>
<feature policy="require" name="rdrand"/>
<feature policy="require" name="hypervisor"/>
<feature policy="require" name="arat"/>
<feature policy="require" name="tsc_adjust"/>
<feature policy="require" name="umip"/>
<feature policy="require" name="ssbd"/>
<feature policy="require" name="xsaveopt"/>
<feature policy="require" name="pdpe1gb"/>
<feature policy="require" name="abm"/>
</cpu>

This works for me maybe it can also help others who build funny virtual-virtual solutions…

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