No VMKernel Dump File on PSOD for ESXi 4

Posted by user66481 on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by user66481
Published on 2011-01-11T21:34:59Z Indexed on 2011/01/11 21:55 UTC
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vmware-esxi

On PSOD no VMKernel Dump File is written to disk and no message is written to screen (the screen is either blank or full of dashes). I need this data to understand why the system crashes; any help as to how to fix this to write a dump file would be appreciated. Thanks.

Notes:

VMKCore partition exists, is active, and is configured (esxcfg-dumppart -l).
esxcfg-advcfg -g /Misc/PsodOnCosPanic = 1.
esxcfg-advcfg -g /Misc/CosCoreFile = /var/core.
esxcfg-dumppart -C -D /vmfs/devices/disks/ = "Error running command. Unable to copy the dump partition: Couldn't find a valid VMKernel dump file. Dump partition might be uninitialized."
Hardware diagnostics (Dell) checks okay.

Hardware:

VMWare ESXi 4.1.0 (VMKernel Release Build 320137)

Dell Inc. Optiplex 960 (2 Drives)

Intel Core 2 Quad CPU Q9400 2.66GHz

Configuration:

2 Virtual Machines: Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition SP2 (1 on each drive)

VM 1: Executes Batch Jobs (Has Internet Information Services 6)

VM 2: Database Server (Has SQL Server 2000)

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