Friday, July 4, 2014

Windows 2008 R2 guest crashing on VMware or Hyper-V 2012 R2 with Intel E5 v2 series processor

Virtual Machine reboots with BSOD suddenly, with no reason? Hosts have Intel E5 v2 processor? And, if you have Hyper-V, you can find event like this:

"Log Name:      Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-Worker-Admin
Source:        Microsoft-Windows-Hyper-V-Worker
Date:          x.x.2014 xx:xx:xx
Event ID:      18560
Task Category: None
Level:         Critical
Keywords:     
User:          NT VIRTUAL MACHINE\<guid>
Computer:      hyper-v-hostname
Description:
'<vmname>' was reset because an unrecoverable error occurred on a virtual processor that caused a triple fault. If the problem persists, contact Product Support. (Virtual machine ID )"

VMware has a good Knowledge Base artice about this issue: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2073791

But, it seems that this issue is also affecting Hyper-V 2012 R2 hosts.

I have had this problem on both platforms. At least Dell has published a BIOS upgrade that fixes this issue, quote from R720 BIOS 2.2.3 release notes:
"What’s New
===========
* Updated Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 V2 product family microcode to 427.
 
Fixes
======
* Corrected an issue where a complex sequence of internal processor events may result in unexpected page faults or use of incorrect page translations If EPT (Extended Page Tables) is enabled.   Due to this erratum a guest may crash or experience unpredictable system behavior."

So, if you run in to this problem, look for BIOS update from your HW vendor!