"The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system" error

Products

VMware VMware Desktop Hypervisor VMware vCenter Server VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to collect troubleshooting information that must be provided to the guest operating system vendor and to resolve this issue you must contact guest operating system vendor.

Symptoms:

The virtual machine stops running and reports the error:

The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system. Power off or reset the virtual machine.

Note: For additional error and log entries, see the Additional information section.

Cause

The error message is seen when a guest operating system running in a VMware virtual machine intentionally halts the virtual CPU by executing the instructions CLI and HLT in succession. This can occur during a critical error or fault within the guest operating system.

This error can occur in:

Windows virtual machines - Caused by the guest operating system crashing (BSOD).
Linux virtual machines - Caused by kernel panic can also generate those messages.

Resolution

Note: For kernel panic, check if guest is configured to capture a kernel dump core file. Refer to your guest OS vendor documentation for the procedure on how to capture and analyse the core dump file.

Collect information from the current outage:

Identify the virtual machine and time of the outage
Take a screenshot of the virtual machine's console and note the error messages
In the inventory, Right Click on the VM, select 'Suspend' for the virtual machine, the checkpoint suspend (.vmss) and memory image (.vmem) will be generated and can be found in the datastore from the virtual machine directory
Convert the checkpoint suspend files (.vmss and .vmem) from the virtual machine into a core dump file using the vmss2core utility. For more information, see the Debugging Virtual Machines with the Checkpoint to Core Tool technical note, and the article Converting a snapshot file to memory dump using the vmss2core tool.
Resume the virtual machine to the suspended state, then reset the virtual machine to start the GuestOS.
Collect logs from the GuestOS kernel leading up to the outage. For more information, contact the guest operating system vendor.
Collect logs from the host leading up to the outage.

NOTE: Do collect the .vmss & .vmem file from datastore before powering on the VM.

How to analysis the dump
Do connect with respective Guest-os vendor if Guest-OS vendor specify if it is a problem with VMware component, along with the analysis please do create a support request with VMware.

Additional Information

You see these additional symptoms:

In the virtual machine's log file, you see message similar to:
Vix: [ nnnnnnn vmxCommands.c: nnnn]: VMAutomation_HandleCLIHLTEvent. Do nothing

Redhat Linux kernel 2.6.32-220.el6.x86_64 has kernel bug which will disable the vCPU. Upgrading the linux kernel version will fix the issue.

Collecting diagnostic information for VMware products
Erro ao inicializar ou desligar máquinas virtuais: a CPU foi desativada
“客户机操作系统已禁用该 CPU”错误
「ゲスト OS によって CPU が無効になりました (The CPU has been disabled by the guest operating system)」エラー