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LunThrasher
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Workstation 8 and ESXi EVC Mode

Hi,

I'm running a view esxi 5 hosts in a cluster within vcenter 5 all under VMware workstation 8 and i'm wanting to do some testing with EVC, however when I try to enable EVC I get the following error:

"Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) cannot be enabled because the cluster contains hosts that lack EVC-capable hardware."

Does anyone have a work around to get this going ? :smileyconfused:

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9 Replies
admin
Immortal
Immortal

Sadly, the virtual CPUs that you get under Workstation 8 do not have all the capabilities required to join an EVC cluster.  However, you should be able to fake the required capabilities with cpuid masking.

What is the base architecture of your EVC cluster?

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LunThrasher
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

yeah i've done that once or twice before for another issue i had running x64 but the error message was more descriptive and I could make out the bits I needed to change in the CPU mask, but this one doesn't give much

my host cpu is Intel i7 920

I'm trying to use EVC mode Intel Nehalem Gen. (Xeon Core i7)

Applies the baseline feature set of Intel® "Nehalem" Generation (Xeon® Core™ i7)
processors to all hosts in the cluster.

Hosts with the following processor types will be permitted to enter the cluster:
Intel® "Nehalem" Generation (Xeon® Core™ i7)
Intel® "Westmere" Generation (Xeon® 32nm Core™ i7)
Intel® "Sandy Bridge" Generation
Future Intel® processors

Compared to the Intel® "Penryn" Generation EVC mode, this EVC mode exposes
additional CPU features including SSE4.2, POPCOUNT, and RDTSCP.


For more information, see Knowledge Base article 1003212.

Do you know what CPU mask bits I need to change ?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Try this:

cpuid.1.ecx = "----:----:----:----:11--:----:---1:11--"

cpuid.1.edx = "1---:----:----:----:----:----:----:----"

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LunThrasher
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

got a chance to try this and no go, I couldn't find the area for CPU mask ID in workstation 8 so I wacked it in the config file for the vm (which is my esxi host) but didn't make any difference. Any other ideas ?

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Well, let's not beat about the bush.  Here are all of the bits required for admission to a Nehalem EVC cluster:

cpuid.1.ecx=----:----:1--1:1---:111-:--1-:--11:11-1
cpuid.1.edx=1---:1111:111-:1-11:1111:1-11:1111:1111
cpuid.80000001.ecx=----:----:----:----:----:----:----:---1
cpuid.80000001.edx=--1-:1---:---1:----:----:1---:----:----

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LunThrasher
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

when I enter in that cpuid mask into the workstation 8 virtual machine config file *.vmx (This is the esxi host) it crashes. I get Exception 0xc0000005 and it dumps to log file

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admin
Immortal
Immortal

Please upload your vmware.log file.

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DizzyD
Contributor
Contributor

cpuid.1.ecx = "----:----:----:----:11--:----:---1:11--"

cpuid.1.edx = "1---:----:----:----:----:----:----:----"

Works great for an intel xeon e5620. THX!

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omerabdullah
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all,

I have setup a lab for testing HA with vCenter 5, ESX 5 and they all run top of a VMWare Workstation 8. Since the processor EVC  capabilites are not directly visible to the ESXi  , I am getting the error

"Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) cannot be enabled because the cluster contains hosts that lack EVC-capable hardware."

I believe some change in the ESXi 's .vmx config file could do the trick. Does anybody know the lines to be added in the config.

BTW the Processor is an Intel i7 Quad core 2630 QM.

Thanks

Omer Abdullah

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