Anyone who has worked in a VMware environment for any length of time should be quite familiar with this purple diagnostic screen, or what we like to call the “purple screen of death“. Even VMware themselves internally reference this setting as “BlueScreenTimeout”, so make no mistake where it’s fathered it’s name. This PSOD screen is what will appear when the ESXi host goes into an unresponsive state.
Note: The default and VMware recommended setting is to leave the host in an unresponsive state with the purple diagnostic screen displayed on the console screen to aid in troubleshooting.
There are some exceptions to VMware’s recommendation on this, mainly for environments or situations where we simply don’t care about what or why the host had a PSOD. We just need it rebooted and be back online and working as soon as possible. Especially if you are using remote syslog on the ESXi host (which you should) this PSOD screen is of trivial importance and just forces manual intervention to have the host rebooted from iLO/IPMI.
If appropriate for your environment lets set a ESXi host to automatically reboot after 120 seconds at the PSOD screen. There are three ways to do this. By SSH or using the “Advanced Settings” window from the vSphere client or vSphere web client.
Using SSH:
Connect to the ESXi host via SSH
Run command:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 120 /Misc/BlueScreenTimeout
The value is in seconds before the reboot will occur. Change this as desired.
Using vSphere Client:
Select the host you wish to configure
Go to the Configuration tab, select Advanced Settings
From the Advanced Settings window select “Misc“.
Find the “Misc.BlueScreenTimeout” value.
Enter desired auto reboot time, in seconds.
Click OK to save, and rinse and repeat for other hosts.
Using vSphere Web Client (5.x+):
Select the host you wish to configure
Select the Manage Tab. Select “Advanced System Settings”.
Scroll down (or use the filter) to find “Misc.BlueScreenTimeout“.
Click the Edit button. Enter the timeout value, in seconds.
Karl has been involved in the virtualization, server, web development and web hosting industry for over 15 years. In his current role at a managed service provider, he is focused on cloud-based solutions for enterprise clients. His diverse background of sales, management, and architectural/technical expertise bring a unique perspective to the virtualization practice.
Automatically reboot an ESXi host after PSOD
Anyone who has worked in a VMware environment for any length of time should be quite familiar with this purple diagnostic screen, or what we like to call the “purple screen of death“. Even VMware themselves internally reference this setting as “BlueScreenTimeout”, so make no mistake where it’s fathered it’s name. This PSOD screen is what will appear when the ESXi host goes into an unresponsive state.
There are some exceptions to VMware’s recommendation on this, mainly for environments or situations where we simply don’t care about what or why the host had a PSOD. We just need it rebooted and be back online and working as soon as possible. Especially if you are using remote syslog on the ESXi host (which you should) this PSOD screen is of trivial importance and just forces manual intervention to have the host rebooted from iLO/IPMI.
If appropriate for your environment lets set a ESXi host to automatically reboot after 120 seconds at the PSOD screen. There are three ways to do this. By SSH or using the “Advanced Settings” window from the vSphere client or vSphere web client.
Using SSH:
The value is in seconds before the reboot will occur. Change this as desired.
Using vSphere Client:
Using vSphere Web Client (5.x+):
Source: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2042500
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Karl has been involved in the virtualization, server, web development and web hosting industry for over 15 years. In his current role at a managed service provider, he is focused on cloud-based solutions for enterprise clients. His diverse background of sales, management, and architectural/technical expertise bring a unique perspective to the virtualization practice.