This is an ESXi VIB package for hardware watchdog heartbeating. If you have a hardware watchdog and it's configured in BIOS, this is your right choice.
2021-02-09T23:38:52Z hardware-watchdog: Starting hardware watchdog daemon...
2021-02-09T23:38:52Z hardware-watchdog: Error occurred when starting hardware watchdog daemon! Please try run 'ipmitool_wd mc watchdog reset' in SSH shell to see what happened.
it is in syslog
2021-02-09T23:38:52Z hardware-watchdog: Starting hardware watchdog daemon... 2021-02-09T23:38:52Z hardware-watchdog: Error occurred when starting hardware watchdog daemon! Please try run 'ipmitool_wd mc watchdog reset' in SSH shell to see what happened. it is in syslog