HP ProLiant G8/G9 Servers, firmware bug: the BIOS has corrupted hw-PMU resources

Last week while installing ESXi 6.x on HP ProLiant G9 server, initially I selected intelligent provisioning and during POST I came across this error message, "[Firmware Bug]: The BIOS Has Corrupted Hw-PMU Resources.

Note: Even with normal install, you may see this error during POST.

Initially I thought there is some issue with firmware so tried to update the firmware using latest HP SPP but found everything already up-to-date. When checked with HP support about this issue, they said it’s a known issue and can be safely ignored.

As per them, “BIOS has corrupted Hw-PMU” error is of no concern and is only the Linux kernel noticing some performance counter registers in the processor had been initialized.

And as listed on this blog,

It is just an informational message. The system is reserving performance counters for system management and the kernel wants to own all the performance counters regardless. You can disable the ProLiant management features if you really want to stop the message. Other than printing the message during boot, there isn’t any negative impact on the system or performance.

As a way around onecan avoid this error msg by disabling the option of Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring in BIOS (enabled by default) but please keep in mind, disabling this would also disable some iLO/CPU monitoring/reporting features (for detail check here, page 10).

To disable Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring in BIOS do the following,

During POST, press F9 to enter BIOS => press CTRL+A (Service Option is hidden by default) => select “Service Options” => Processor Power and Utilization Monitoring and disable it
Now press F10 to save and exit and then reboot the server.

Related Support Information: HP ProLiant DL360/DL380 Gen9 Server - Install with Red Hat Enterprise Server Version 6.6 Gives Error During Post : The BIOS has corrupted hw-PMU Resources (MSR 38d is 330) 

That’s it… :)