Here is one from friend of mine, very skilled Senior IT Engineer, Tomasz Jagiello. Some bugs he identified while working with VMware ESX 6.

Symptoms

VM running Windows 10 (x64) as the Guest OS is automatically reset after some hours (roughly a day). Reoccurs daily.

The thread said it also applied to Windows Server 2016 VMs.

There is an unrecoverable error that cause the VMkernel to shut down / restart / crash the virtual machine.

VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vcpu-0) NOT_REACHED bora/devices/ahci/ahci_user.c:1530

Check if you’re using a para-virtual SATA adapter in the settings of the VM.

 

Cause

There is a VMware bug where if the SATA adapter receives SMART communications on a non-SMART device the CPU bus locks up and ESX reboots the VM.

I was using SCSI for the VM disks and SATA for the VM CD-ROM.

 

Workaround

  1. Edit VM Hardware settings
    • Remove CD/ROM
    • OK
  2. Edit VM Hardware settings
    • Remove SATA Controller
    • OK
  3. Edit VM Hardware settings
    • Add CD/ROM
    • Change to IDE
    • Remove SATA Controller
    • OK