Forcing a Kernel Dump on a vSphere Host : The Purple Screen of Death
January 09, 2012 
Sean Crookston 
This is nothing new however I thought I’d share on how to force a PSOD on a vSphere host in case you were not aware. I had done this a while back but was unable to retrieve the information my self when searching. Thanks to @CianoKuraz & @lamw(http://www.virtuallyghetto.com) for their help on Twitter.
Eric Sloof (http://www.ntpro.nl) documented this quite some time ago on his website here. The process is quite easy and goes as follows:
- Connect to the vSphere host via SSH.
- Type vsish
- Type set /reliability/crashMe/Panic
Alternatively you can send an NMI interrupt. This depends on your hardware and if you are interested in learning more about this check out VMware KB 1014767
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