How can I disable physical processors?

[Bob_Jenkins]

For reasons best not explained, our company has many quad-core servers which have only 2-processor ESX licences (future-proofing or something)!

I don't seem to be able to disable any processors in the BIOS (HP BL680 blades).

Rather than yank out the procs, am I able to tell ESX to use only two per server?

Many thanks.

[weinstein5]

You will not need to - VMware licenses to physical processor not core - so a dual processor quad core will allow your ESX server access to 8 logical processors but only require two ESX licenses -

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[Bob_Jenkins]

Many thanks, but to clarify:

Each blade has FOUR physical processors (each of these are quad-core, so therefore 16 cores per blade).

We only have 2-proc ESX licences and therefore need to disable two of the four physical ones on each blade.

Thanks again.

[TomHowarth · Accepted solution]

I think you are scuppered, ESX will see the four processors and take 2x 2proc licenses from the License server. you will need to physically remove the processors or only utilise half the servers, or purchase more ESX licenses.

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Tom Howarth

VMware Communities User Moderator

[simongrills]

Bob - Did you ever find a way to remoetly disable physical proc's ? As I have same requirments as what you had at this time...