Virtualization Technology disbaled in BIOS

[vcpguy]

Hi,

I have Dell 6950 box and I have noticed that the VT, is disabled. Should this be enabled for better performance?

Also, the surprising this was - This is a AMD box, so it should not be VT, because that is from Intel, right ?

Thanks

[Troy_Clavell]

in order to run 64bit guests V Technology and Longmode must be enabled in the host(s) BIOS. If you don't plan on running any 64bit guests, than you don't have to enable it.

this thread, http://communities.vmware.com/thread/140155 may help a bit as well

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[JonRoderick]

I'm pretty sure you won't be able to leverage EVC unless you enable the CPU virtualisation technology in the BIOS.

Jon

[vcpguy]

Isn't it EVc is supposed to be used, if you have different types of processor?

[JonRoderick]

That's right - it will reduce the CPU features available to the guests to the lowest supported level based on the CPUs present in the host.

Jon

[vcpguy]

What happens, if I enable the VT ( Very surprise to see this. This is an AMD box, so they should have V (pacifica) and not VT perhaps someone will explain this to me) on a box which runs 32-bit OS?

I have a cluster with different types of OS with HA and DRS enabled on it. So, I dont know, once the VM is up and running, on which host, will it end up.

Thanks

[Craig_Baltzer]

From what I've read (and is further discussed in the thread Troy referenced) the requirement for running 64 bit guests on AMD is an Opteron Rev E or later. The need is for segement truncation support, and the Rev E and later Opterons have that. Pacifica (AMD-V) support is not required (or used) by ESX to run 64 bit (unlike on Intel where VT is required).

EVC appears to require Intel VT FlexMigration and AMD-V Extented Migration support to work. Document ID 1005763, 1005764 and 1003212 from kb.vmware.com go through this a bit

So long story short you should be able to run a 64 bit guest with Pacifica/AMD-V left in its default "disabled" state, however if you want to use EVC then you'll need it enabled on all the hosts in the cluster.

[malaysiavm]

for virtualization, always enable VT from the BIOS for the 1st time you setup your servers. You need that to run 64 bits and fully occupied the features on the processors to run virtualization.

Malaysia VMware Communities -

[TomHowarth]

Lets clear up any misconception, VT Extensions are required only for Intel Chips. when wanting to run 64it guests, AMD chipsets Virtualiation is builtin to the physical Chip.

EVC is a completly diferent kettle of fish, this is third generation chip based virtualisation built into CPUs starting with Intel 45nm Core 2 (Penryn) and AMD Second Generation Opteron (revision E or F) incorporate FlexMigration and Extended Migration technologies, respectively. You are also required to be running ESX 3.5 U2 or greater to be able to utilise it.

EVC may require Virtualisation extensions to be activated in the BIOS but I think only if you are running 64bit Guests.

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Check out http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/56292/understanding-vmware-evc and its comments for how to configure EVC.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization