Enhanched Vmotion Compatibility & Intel Xeon

[christiandouma]

We have a cluster with two identical HP Proliant DL580g5. Each server has 4 Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU x7350 @ 2.93GHz. But when I want to enable the Enchanched Vmotion Compatibility in the cluster settings it says under details in "Incompatible hosts" "Hardware incompatible". I updated both esx hosts with alle the latest patches, but still no luck. I checked the bios if the virtualization is enabled and it is.

Anybody knows what could be wrong?

[lamw]

Are these CPU's in the VMware HCL?

[christiandouma]

According to the hcl page 17 it is supported. If it wasnt I found it quite strange cause its the latest HP Proliant DL580, namely the g5. Also vmotion is working in the cluster, I just can't enable the "enhanced vmotion compatibility" in the cluster settings. I dont have any other intel servers to put it to another test, cause it seems to be an Intel problem. Our clusters based on amd opterons have no hardware incompatibilities and are now already EVC enabled.

[Erik_Bussink]

VMware has release a CPU Identification Utility (7/1/2008, Build: 102204) that will "Displays CPU features for VMotion compatibility, EVC and indicates 64-bit VMware support." You will find a .iso file in that zip that you can brun to a cdrom and then test on your host systems. This allow you to do a manual check of what EVC tests on you're hosts.

[christiandouma]

I runned the cpu identification utility on the esx host, but the when the test runs it crashes the server and it will eventually reboot. The same happend when I tried to run it on another server. Anybody has a idea what could be wrong?

[prashantprahlad]

Are you booting your server through a CD on which contains the .iso image of this utility?

Your server CPU should be capable of entering an EVC cluser. Your BIOS settings are probably getting in the way. Are Hardware Virtualization and eXecute Disable is turned on in the BIOS?

[admin]

Another thing to try would be to create an empty cluster, enable EVC for Intel there, evacuate or power off all VMs on the host, and then try moving the host into the cluster... see what error message that generates.

This error message means the host has the wrong CPU family/model: "The host's CPU hardware does not support Enhanced VMotion Compatibility, which is enabled for this cluster."

This error message means that the host has a CPU family/model that is generally acceptable for EVC, but not acceptable for the mode active on the cluster (shouldn't happen in update 2, since there is only one mode per vendor in that release): "The host's CPU hardware does not support the specific Enhanced VMotion Compatibility mode that is currently enabled for this cluster."

This error message means that the host's CPU family/model should be OK, but the specific CPU features advertised by the host are lacking: ""The host's CPU hardware should support the Enhanced VMotion Compatibility mode that is enabled for this cluster, but some of the necessary CPU features are missing. Check the host's BIOS configuration to ensure that no necessary features are disabled (such as XD and VT for Intel, or NX for AMD)."

[christiandouma]

I mounted the iso in a ILO session on the server. So it was no physical disk inserted in the server. This shouldnt be a problem, cause we install servers this way.

[christiandouma]

I will try to examine the bios entries on my first workday on monday and will repost here the outcome. Thank you everyone for the replies so far.

[Aftenposten · Accepted solution]

Make sure you have enabled VT and No execute protection (or something similart to that, I don't have the exact text in front of me) in the BIOS. Also, you have to turn off all vm's to enable EVC or create a new cluster and move hosts and vm's to the new cluster.

[prashantprahlad]

christiandouma, the CPUID utility should work with ILO as well. Can you please post details of what you observer during the crash (perhaps screenshots)?

[christiandouma]

First of all my excuse that I didnt post earlier, but I couldnt log on the site yesterday cause my login wasnt accepted. I checked the bios again of the servers and saw that the No Execute option was disabled. After enabling it EVC showed that the server was compatibel. Thank you for helping me out.

[prashantprahlad]

Great!. If the CPUID utility crashes your server, it would be helpful if you can post a screeenshot of how exactly it crashes. Thanks.

[christiandouma]

Tomorrow I have an off day, but will try to simulate the cpuid test again on thursday and take some screenshots.

[christiandouma]

I tested the cpuid iso again with the only difference that I have the NX enabled in the bios. Result is still the same. Attached are two screenshots from an HP ILO active remote console.

[prashantprahlad]

Thank you. I suspect the utility is not capable of running with 16 CPUs. I'm sure VMware will fix this in the next update to this tool.

[christiandouma]

Then this topics can be officially closed. Thanks everyone for the help.