Knowledge Base

Summaries and Symptoms

This patch fixes an issue where systems using the bnx2x driver with a Broadcom NetXtreme II 57710, 57711, or 57711E NIC might experience unstable behavior whenever there is certain I/O stress or pattern. Known cases of unstable behavior include VMotion failures and memory heap issues. These behaviors are more likely to occur when using jumbo frames. The vmkernel log file shows error messages similar to the following:

Feb 17 14:52:37 esx10 vmkernel: 0:01:43:18.615 cpu6:1264)WARNING: Heap: 1397: Heap migHeap0 already at its maximumSize. Cannot expand.
Feb 20 11:00:35 viesxlabrtp02 vmkernel: 0:17:06:37.984 cpu0:1024)WARNING: Heap: 1419: Heap bnx2x (35648248/35648264): Maximum allowed growth (24) too small for size (4096)
Feb 20 11:00:35 viesxlabrtp02 vmkernel: 0:17:06:37.984 cpu0:1024)WARNING: Heap: 1522: Heap_Align(bnx2x, 2048/2048 bytes, 4 align) failed. caller: 0x8efb8e

Deployment Considerations

None beyond the required patch bundles and reboot information listed in the table, above.

Patch Download and Installation

See the VMware Update Manager Administration Guide for instructions on using Update Manager to download and install patches to automatically update ESX Server 3.5 hosts.

To update ESX Server 3.5 hosts when not using Update Manager, download the most recent patch bundle from http://support.vmware.com/selfsupport/download/ and install the bundle using esxupdate from the command line of the host. For more information, see the ESX Server 3 Patch Management Guide.