ESXi 5.0 nested FT issue -> i7-2600 not supported for FT ?

[jarxale]

Hi guys, I have got a i7-2600 on a ASRock Z68 Extreme4 Gen 3 motherboard as a ESXi 5.0 whitebox setup.

I have 2 virtualised ESXi 5.0 in a cluster with a nested Linux VM running, both vMotion & Storage vMotion works fine.

If I turn on the FT while nested VM is running, I get this error:
The virtual machine is running in a monitor mode that is incompatible for Fault Tolerance.

If I shutdown the nested VM and enable FT, I encountered th following:
An unexpected error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM vm-441.
Unable to enter Fault Tolerance mode.
Record/Replay is supported for 64-bit virtual machines only on certain CPUs. Canceling Record/Replay.

I have applied the replay settings as mentioned in http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-nested-vft-virtual-fault.html
to the nested Linux VM.

Intel VT check on physical ESXi 5.0 host and both vESXi hosts :
~ # esxcfg-info | grep "HV Support"
|----HV Support............................................3
|----World Command Line.................................grep HV Support

SiteSurvey on physical host and vESXi hosts all showed:
CPU type Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz is not supported by FT.

Am I right to say that FT in my current nested setup should work if I changed the CPU to one listed in
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100802...

OR is having at least 2 physical ESX hosts the only way to have full FT support ?

[admin]

Double-check the following configuration option for your nested VM:

replay.allowBTOnly = TRUE

[admin · Accepted solution]

jarxale wrote:

OR is having at least 2 physical ESX hosts the only way to have full FT support ?

Sorry.  I should have paid more careful attention to your post.  FT is not actually supported in a nested environment.  Binary translation replay (replay.allowBTOnly) is unsupported and only available for 32-bit nested guests.

[jarxale]

Thanks for clearing things up.
I managed to get a 32-bit Ubuntu nested VM to work with FT after applying the following on it:

replay.supported = "true"
replay.allowBTonly = "true"
replay.allowFT = "true"

Also for the 2 vESXi:

replay.allowBTonly = "true"
replay.allowFT = "true"

For some reason if the above 2 settings are not set on the vESXi, the secondary VM will never start up properly, Fault Tolerance status just goes from Starting to Need Secondary VM.

I will be setting an additional whitebox to save myself from such headaches again. :smileygrin:

[Flaviomcs]

im also struggling with a problem like this... where do i put this values ??

replay.supported = "true"

replay.allowBTonly = "true"

replay.allowFT = "true"

im using vsphere 5.5  with esxi 5.5

thanks.