Lenovo SN550, SN850, ST550 and X722 PSOD
One of my customers is currently upgrading their ROBO locations to vSphere 7.0 U3c. At the locations, they are using Lenovo ST550 servers with an X722 BOM network card (Intel Ethernet Connection X722 for 1GbE. (8086:37d1 17aa:4022)). They were using the actual Lenovo Image for vSphere 7.0 U3c found here. When checking the firmware/driver combination they found out that they were not on the VMware Compatibility Guide (VCG).
Therefore the customer decided to install the most recent driver from the HCL (1.13.1.0) and promptly encountered a Purple Screen of Death (PSOD). After he asked me for help it took some time until I found this support article from Lenovo. It was for the customized ISO for vSphere 6.7 U3 but it has the same problem.
Looks like version 1.13.1.0 has some issues with this type of network card. There are now 2 possibilities to fix this problem.
- Use the default driver which comes with the 7.0 U3c custom iso (1.11.1.31)
- Downgrade to 1.10.9.0 as mentioned in the article
From my perspective, I would recommend using the 1.11.1.31 driver although it is not on the VMware Compatibility Guide, it is the inbox driver of the vSphere 7.0 U3c image. If there is a support case and the support engineer would argue about the supportability I would send him the above article from Lenovo.