Problem:
Poor HPE it just seems that whatever they try they just cannot fix the qfle3f driver issue that has plagued vmware installations for the last year. It seems that patch after patch to try and fix this thing is just met with the same PSOD PANIC Corruption in dlmalloc error a few months down the line. For us the issue occurs because of the drivers for our HPE FlexFabric 10Gb 4-port 536FLR-T Adapters.
Solution:
Currently we are on the latest version of ESXi ESXi670-202006001 16316930 and using the latest qfle3f so it is clear that there is no solution. After contacting VMware the only solution is a workaround to disable the FCOE component of the driver which fortunately we do not use.
A quick PowerCLI command will show you which versions of the driver you currently have and you can compare this to what is available:
get-vmhost | % { $vmhost = $_.name; $esxcli = get-esxcli -vmhost $_; $esxcli.system.module.list() | where name -eq qfle3f | select @{l='vmhost';e={$vmhost}}, Name, IsEnabled, IsLoaded, @{N="qfle3 version";E={$esxcli.system.module.get("qfle3").version}} } | ft -auto
If like us you were already on the latest version available and still have the problem you can disable the FCOE component (if you do not use fiber channel)
Login to the host using SSH and check the installed drivers:
esxcli system module list | grep qfle3
Disable the fiber component:
esxcli system module set --enabled=false --module=qfle3f
Then reboot the host
Here are some links that helped me and for further reference:
https://doogleit.github.io/2019/10/esxi-qfle-driver-causing-psods/#
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/71361
