Users Guide

Outdated firmware
ESXi requires NVDIMM-N modules to have a minimum 9324 firmware image. If they have older firmware they will not behave
correctly.
In the event of out dated firmware on the memory (lower than 9324), the system will boot into the ESX hypervisor and the
DIMMs will be visible in the UI. No namespaces will be populated and the DIMMs cannot be mounted to a VM guest OS.
Since this lower firmware is unsupported, other error behaviors such as Overall Health Status, Address Range Scrub, and UI
error reporting are not tested and may not function properly until DIMM firmware is up to a current version.
Though unsupported, Storage->Modules and Storage->Interleave Sets appear to display the correct information.
When NVDIMMs with 9324 and 8860 FW revisions are mixed, the ones with 9324 rev can be used and will be indicated as
“Normal” in the Web GUI whereas the others will be indicated as “Maintenance Needed”.
When an NVDIMM-N firmware update fails, the DIMM will operate off of backup firmware. For NVDIMM-N modules shipped in
2017 and 2018 this backup firmware is expected to be at revision 8860. Unless the NVDIMMs are re-updated to revision 9324,
they cannot be used in ESXi.
Figure 35. NVDIMM-N modules status
NVDIMM Namespaces do not get created when the NVDIMM-N devices are running of firmware revision 8860.
Figure 36. NVDIMM Namespaces
NVDIMM-N Errors
In the majority of cases where NVDIMM-N modules have an error, the system level behavior will be for the bad NVDIMM-N
module to be put into a read-only state. This will cause any VMs mapped to ANY NVDIMM-N modules in the system to fail to
power-on including VMs which are not mapped to the bad NVDIMM-N module. If an NVDIMM-N is flagged as having an error,
resolve the issue with that NVDIMM-N then attempt to access VMs connected to the PMEM datastore again. Please see ESXi
documentation for more information about migrating data and restoring access to impacted VMs.
ESXi
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