ESXi host with problematic Broadcom FCoE driver

[oneilv]

Hey Guys,

I am seeing the below "ESXi host with problematic Broadcom FCoE driver" in the vCenter Health Recommendations.

The notes that come with this warning reads the below:

ESXi host might crash with a purple diagnostic screen error caused while trying to allocate an input/ output clock. The issue is fixed since driver version 12.0.1216.4. Click the Ask VMware link above for further details.

The warnings are seen on all ESXi hosts in our vCenter Inventory and I've seen this at multiple customers. I also check and confirmed that the version of the brcmfcoe driver is below the recommended version mentioned above.

I logged a case with GSS however their recommendation is more of a trial and error method. They are suggesting to

1. Disable the brcmfcoe driver and check if the warnings are gone from the vCenter Health check

     OR

2. Upgrade the brcmfcoe to version 12.0.1216.4 or later and check the vCenter Health check again.

Anyone seen the above and got any useful information to provide on this?

Cheers, Onil

[Nawals]

I experience this issue. You need manually to update  brcmfcoe driver vib to removes the warning.You need to reboot the ESX.

command for update the driver- esxcli software vib update -d offlinebundlename

Reference KB VMware Knowledge Base

[oneilv]

Hi Nawals,

Your KB article refers to the driver recommendations by HPE. Is there any general KB from VMware highlighting that this driver version has known issues across all hardware vendors? We have multiple customers using different hardware vendors and they all are seeing this warning.

Cheers, Onil

[Nawals]

Can You confirm which hardware you are using.

[oneilv]

Customers are using HPE, Dell, Cisco and IBM

[bmstewart]

oneilv​

Have you figured anything out about this?

We have 3 PowerEdge R6515s, and I noticed this in Skyline Health for all of 3 of them recently.

We don't even use FCoE and as far as I know, the servers don't even have an HBA capable of it.

I'm unsure of where to check within vSphere to see if this driver is actually present and loaded, and I have no idea if I need to take any action to update the driver.  According to Update Manager, there are no relevant updates available for the hosts.

[oneilv]

Hi bmstewart​

Yes upgrading the brcmfcoe to version 12.0.1216.4 has fixed this issue for me. It will be worth checking if the ESXi host has an old driver installed which is why you are seeing the warning. If the driver is installed but not loaded then disabling the driver should also fix these warnings.

Cheers, Onil

[bmstewart]

Thanks for the reply. I noticed that VMware has updated that page to indicate that it's not only HP hardware, and I have verified we do have the old driver on the hosts (not sure if it's active/loaded or not).

I'm not sure why VMware has not pushed out the updated driver into the normal update repositories.  I did add it to a new host extension baseline and applied that baseline to our hosts, so I should be able to just apply the update easily, when I get the maintenance window to do so.