Big Sur Host: Nested virtualization on Win10 Guest: BSODs with WSL, "Virtual Machine Platform" on

[yellowapple]

Could this be a bug in VMware Fusion / VMware Tools when nested virtualization is enabled?

My setup:

• macOS BigSur Version 11.4
• iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017) 64GB memory
• VMware Fusion Professional Version 12.1.2 (17964953)
• Guest OS: Windows 10 Pro 21H1 freshly installed without internet access
  • 4 cores CPU, 8GB RAM
  • "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine"
  • "Accelerate 3D Graphics", 8GB Shared graphics memory
  • "Use full resolution for Retina display"
  • Network adapter: Private to my Mac
  • Hard disk 60GB
  • The rest are defaults.

To recreate the problem:

1. After Guest OS install is completed, ensure that VMware Tools 11.2.6 is installed.
2. In Guest OS, Open "Turn Windows features on or off" and enable the following:
   1. Virtual Machine Platform
   2. Windows Subsystem for Linux
3. Reboot
4. Wait for a few minutes (even without logging in): BSOD "CRITICAL PROCESS DIED" and later other kinds of BSOD also.

This is a very simple test without anything special: fresh install with no additional 3rd party SW on Guest OS.

If Virtual Machine Platform is not enabled I don't see this BSOD.

Other kinds of BSOD also happen occasionally. List of BSOD stop codes observed so far with this setup:

• CRITICAL PROCESS DIED
• KERNEL SECURITY CHECK FAILURE

Also if WSL and Virtual Machine Platform are disabled, but Hyper-V is enabled: BSOD happens. Only when nested virtualisation is completely disabled is when I experience a stable Guest OS environment.

Anyone can recreate and confirm this? If so, could a VMware engineer look into this?

Thanks

[yellowapple]

Here's an update: After uninstalling VMware Fusion Tools, rebooting, BSOD is still happening. 😣

Also, I've migrated this Guest OS to Parallels Desktop on Big Sur, enabled nested virtualisation: No problem. I installed ubuntu on WSL2 and so far no issue.

My assessment so far: The problem seems to lie with VMware Fusion (and perhaps how it integrates with Apple's Hypervisor Framework?) and not VMware Tools.

[NReilingh]

I want to say I've been experiencing the exact same issue -- also just within the last couple of days. In my Win10Pro guest OS, I didn't have Virtual Machine Platform or WSL turned on, but I did have the Hyper-V and Containers features enabled. Was getting the same "CRITICAL PROCESS DIED" BSOD at seemingly random intervals after reboot. I turned off the Hyper-V feature only, and have been running fine for a few hours since then.

Around the same time as the BSODs started happening, the main software I use on Windows (SQL Server Management Studio) started crashing randomly. I did have some updates for it that were installed around the same time, though, so it's hard to say if the issue is related to the BSOD or not. Both issues started showing up after installing the latest VMware Tools Guest Additions package (11.2.6, build-17901274).

Good to know this was happening for you on a fresh install -- saves me the trouble!

A couple more notes: I'm also on Big Sur on Intel, but only macOS 11.2.3. I am on Fusion Player 12.1.2. I would guess that the latest fusion point release is the culprit. If you can get ahold of a 12.1.1 installer, it might be worth a try...

[TECHN0tiger]

I have the exact same issue. This needs to be fixed by VMware team.

[MatthiasE]

Would be nice to get a feedback from VMware on this.

I'm suffering from the same (Fusion Pro 12.2.1; albeit: Host is Monterey 12.2).

With WSL2 enabled I get BSOD in Windows 11

[MatthiasE]

Push....

VMware Fusion 12.2.3 is still unusable in this scenario 😕

(Nested Virtualization with WSL2 on Windows 11)

[hg1337]

I have basically the same problems (different BSOD, crashing processes, Windows freezing completely) with the VMware Fusion 13.0.0 on MacOS 13.1 with Windows 11 Pro (all have the latest updates) as long as "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine" is enabled (and actually used).

Took me some time till I figured this out. First I migrated my Windows 10 VM from Parallels which started crashing and at first I thought it has something to do with the graphics driver. Then I installed a fresh Windows 11 Pro which started crashing and freezing as soon as I installed WSL incl. the Virtual Machine Platform. As long as "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine" was enabled, but  WSL/Virtual Machine Platform was not installed, everything was fine, and when both are installed, but "Enable hypervisor applications in this virtual machine" is disabled, it's fine too.

I switched from Parallels because they can do nested virtualization only with they own hypervisor which is deprecated and I read that VMware Fusion can do nested virtualization with the Apple hypervisor, but seems that this is not really the case, at least if it is supposted to actually work. 😞

[ColoradoMarmot]

It can, but there are some CPU's that don't have the needed features.

[hg1337]

Which features exactly are you talking about? I pretty sure my CPU (one of the latest Intel Core i5 Apple built into MacBooks) has all the required features (otherwise I would also expect that Fusion doesn't offer the option to enable it), and it works perfectly with the Parallels hypervisor which also uses the virtualization features of the CPU.

Edit: It's the i5-1038NG7 to be precise.

[Technogeezer]

Your CPU still might not have the necessary features. See https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/80785

In particular. the lack of the VMCS shadowing feature is the one that gives people the most trouble. Not all Intel chips that Apple selected have this feature - even for more recent Intel Mac models. Intel gives clues that the VMCS shadowing feature is present in chips that are part of the vPro program. Those chips are listed here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/details/processors/vpro/products.html

I think you'll find that many Intel Mac models have chips that aren't vPro and therefore don't have the VMCS shadowing.

Fusion will fall back to software tactics to deal with this lack of a hardware instruction when using nested virtualization.. As they note, this workaround will let the VM run, but performance will not be stellar.

You can't discount the possibility of quirks with Hyper-V running nested in a Windows VM. (WSL uses Hyper-V). Especially when that Windows VM runs on top of an Apple hypervisor. A guest is at the mercy of the hypervisor as to what hardware features it's going to expose to it. I'm fairly sure that Apple hasn't gone out of their way to test Hyper-V running on top of their hypervisor framework. 

Microsoft doesn't exactly shine at nested virtualization even if the host is a Windows machine running Hyper-V.

[hg1337]

Thank you for the details @Technogeezer!

I could live with some bad performance (the performance of the Parallels hypervisor was indeed not the best as well, but at least it worked somehow), but the crashes and bluescreens are really a showstopper.

Actually I need the nested virtualization mainly for a dev environment for an Open Source project which also uses docker etc. which I don't want to have all on my normal MacOS. Probably I try it on a Linux or MacOS VM next, let's see how this works...