Easy way to update host with vCenter on it?

[Noiden]

Hi,

I have two ESXi 6.5 hosts.

Host-1 - Dell PowerEdge T620

Host-2 - Dell PowerEdge T440

vCenter 6.5 appliance is on Host-2 for the moment, but to be able to use VUM to upgrade the host, the host must be in maintenance mode and all VM's powered down and because of that I can't have vCenter on Host-2 when I should do the update on that host.

I don't have a license with vMotion but thinking of getting that if this method works so I did try the "Migrate" in vCenter anyway, but I got a lot of warnings with CPU incompatibility on Host-1 that I should move vCenter to.

The target host does not support the virtual machine's current hardware requirements.

To resolve CPU incompatibilities, use a cluster with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled. See KB article 1003212.

3DNow! PREFETCH and PREFETCHW are unsupported.

MOVBE is unsupported.

FMA3 is unsupported.

CPUID faulting is not supported.

Supervisor Mode Execution Protection (SMEP) is unsupported.

RDRAND is unsupported.

Instructions to read and write FS and GS base registers at any privilege level are unsupported.

Half-precision conversion instructions (F16C) are unsupported.

Fast string operations (Enhanced REP MOVSB/STOSB) are unsupported.

Is this even possible to fix? Will that EVC thing fix this?

I also tried the "Quick Migration" in Veeam and it did not complain about any incompatibility, maybe I should try that one instead.

Well, is there an easier method? I know I can download VIB's and install them from the ESXi shell, but it's a lot of updates and I don't wan't to install them all one by one.

Thanks.

[msripada]

You can try the suggestion as per this community article Issues with vMotion |VMware Communities

Thanks,

MS

[daphnissov]

msripada​, OP says they don't have a license that entitles them to vMotion.

What CPUs are on both of your hosts? Even if you aren't entitled to vMotion, vCenter will still validate the CPU compatibility, which is failing because host 2 has more instruction sets available than host 1.

[Debashish_Rath]

You do not need vMotion licence , you can remove the vCenter machine from the Inventory and re-register to the other Host.

[daphnissov]

This is only possible if host 1 and host 2 have shared storage and thus host 1 can see the vCenter VM.

[Noiden]

You do not need vMotion licence , you can remove the vCenter machine from the Inventory and re-register to the other Host.

Not possible at the moment because I don't have a shared storage at the moment and even if I fix that, will the vCenter start because of the CPU incompatibility?

[Noiden]

daphnissov​

CPU

Host-1 - Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2603 0 @ 1.80GHz

Host-2 - Intel(R) Xeon(R) Silver 4110 CPU @ 2.10GHz

OT

That "quote the previous message" function does not seems to work so good... 😃

[daphnissov]

These are wildly different CPUs, so yes you would have to use EVC to enable vMotion of VMs between these hosts. You need vCenter to configure EVC, so it has to be running somewhere to make that cluster-wide configuration, which sounds like may be a problem for you.

You can quote but still have to copy-paste the text.

[Noiden]

vCenter is running on Host-2 at the moment so I can activate that EVC thing on Host-1? Or must EVC be activated on both host?

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

No, EVC is a cluster-wide configuration change. What you may need to do is transfer (you could use Veeam Quick Migrate but vCenter will be shutdown) vCenter to host 1 which is an older CPU than host 2 and power it up. When it comes up, you should be able to turn on EVC and put both hosts into EVC mode (provided all VMs on host 2 are stopped). Host 2's CPU instruction past whatever level you set will be masked away. Keep in mind, none of this matters if you don't have an entitlement to use vMotion.

[Noiden]

Maybe I should just move the vCenter with Veeam Quick Migration the times when I need to upgrade host 2.

I would like an "apt-get update" instead of Veeam Update Manager for ESXi, that would be nice :smileygrin:

[daphnissov]

No, you should just buy a license that entitles you to vMotion.

[Noiden]

Maybe 😃

Anyway, does this EVC mode makes my never CPU to perform less or something?

Edit.

I found a document from vmware, they had did some benchmark in EVC mode and there was not much impact, only on encryption.

[daphnissov]

It really depends on what your guests/applications are doing. If there are certain instruction sets which they heavily leverage to optimize some of their code, then you could see a performance impact, but how much and of what nature is hard to say.