FIX : PSOD on hosts with AMD Opteron 62xx series processors

If you’re running ESX/ESXi on either HP or Dell hosts with AMD Opteron 62xx series processors and were affected by the PSOD issue, then you will be happy to know that both vendors have now released BIOS updates to address this. My understanding is that this was actually a problem with the AMD microcode rather than a VMware, HP or Dell issue.

I was affected by this using Dell PowerEdge R815 servers immediately after upgrading the BIOS on my hosts from a mix of version 2.8.2 and version 2.9.0 to version 3.0.4. The workaround up till now was to downgrade the BIOS version on all hosts back to version 2.8.2.

Dell PowerEdge R815 Hosts

ItemValue
Processor ModelAMD Opteron(tm) Processor 6276
Processor Speed2.3 GHz
Processor Sockets4
Processor Cores per Socket16
Logical Processors64
Memory256 GB

Here are the links the vendor advisories and updates;

Interestingly Dell have only flagged the importance of this upgrade as “Recommended” – not sure about you, but I quite like my hosts to be up and running!

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Author: Jon Munday

An independent IT contractor with a strong focus on VMware virtualisation and infrastructure operations. I am inspired by technology, not afraid to question the status quo and balance my professional commitments with entertaining my three awesome kids (Ashton, Oliver and Lara).

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