Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 15:07:17 +0700 From: Adam Strohl <adams-freebsd@ateamsystems.com> To: FreeBSD-Stable ML <freebsd-stable@freebsd.org> Subject: Time Clock Stops in FreeBSD 9.0 guest running under ESXi 5.0 Message-ID: <4F5B0BB5.5010406@ateamsystems.com>
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I've now seen this on two different VMs on two different ESXi servers (Xeon based hosts but different hardware otherwise and at different facilities): Everything runs fine for weeks then (seemingly) suddenly/randomly the clock STOPS. In the first case I saw a jump backwards of about 15 minutes (and then a 'freeze' of the clock). The second time just 'time standing still' with no backwards jump. Logging accuracy is of course questionable given the nature of the issue, but nothing really jumps out (ie; I don't see NTPd adjusting the time just before this happens or anything like that). Naturally the clock stopping causes major issues, but the machine does technically stay running. My open sessions respond, but anything that relies on time moving forward hangs. I can't even gracefully reboot it because shutdown/etc all rely on time moving forward (heh). So I'm not sure if this is a VMWare/ESXi issue or a FreeBSD issue, or some kind of interaction between the two. I manage lots of VMWare based FreeBSD VMs, but these are the only ESXi 5.0 servers and the only FreeBSD 9.0 VMs. I have never seen anything quite like this before, and last night as I mentioned above I had it happen for the second time on a different VM + ESXi server combo so I'm not thinking its a fluke anymore. I've looked for other reports of this both in VMWare and FreeBSD contexts and not seeing anything. What is interesting is that the 2 servers that have shown this issue perform similar tasks, which are different from the other VMs which have not shown this issue (yet). This is 2 VMs out of a dozen VMs spread over two ESXi servers on different coasts. This might be a coincidence but seems suspicious. These two VMs run these services (where as the other VMs don't): - BIND - CouchDB - MySQL - NFS server - Dovecot 2.x I would also say that these two VMs probably are the most active, have the most RAM and consume the most CPU because of what they do (vs. the others). I have disabled NTPd since I am running the OpenVM Tools (which I believe should be keeping the time in sync with the ESXi host, which itself uses NTP), my only guess is maybe there is some kind of collision where NTPd and OpenVMTools were adjusting the time at the same time. I'm playing the waiting game now to see what this brings (again though I am running NTPd and OpenVMTools on all the other VMs which have yet to show this issue). Anyone seen anything like this? Ring any bells? -- Adam Strohl A-Team Systems http://ateamsystems.com/
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