ESXi 4 on Dell PowerEdge SC1420 detects only 1 CPU

[JJF2010]

Hi,

I'm running ESXi 4 build 244038 on a Dell PowerEdge SC1420 with 12Gb RAM and 2 x Dual Core Intel XEON 3Ghz physical CPU's installed but since ESXi 4 has been installed, it only seems to "see" 1 CPU. I know its not really approved to use ESXi but we've managed to use it for some time now without major issues (apart from limited resources). At present, i've only got 1645Mhz for CPU and 9272Mb RAM total capacity to spread across any VM's I plan to run.

However, previously I had been running ESXi 3.5 on the same server and this did detect both CPU's without any issues (apart from any reboots and having to manually enter "nocheckcpuidlimit" at bootup, but this wasn't too much of an issue), so we could run more VM's and have a decent resource pool to take advantage of (far more than 1645Mhz!)

Has anyone managed to get ESXi 4 to detect both CPU's correctly and available to use within ESXi?

We've had to migrate to an older SuperMicro H8DCE with 2x AMD Opteron 270's to take advantage of having more than one decent VM running at a time, but it would be nice to resurrect the SC1420 to use both processors.

Any help or information is most grateful.

[HughBorg707]

The first thing I would check is the licensing for your ESXi setup.

I have an 1850 dual xeon setup that recognizes both CPUs just fine.

Also are your Xeons VT enabled? If so you can run 64 bit VMs; if not you can run ESXi 4 but only 32 bit VMs.

Regards

Hugh

http://www.1zero1.net

[JJF2010]

Hi Hugh,

The licence code i've been given when signed up to ESXi have worked fine on the SuperMicro which detects both physical CPU's fine. I'm also running on a Dell PowerEdge T310 and also a HP Proliant ML110 G5 with the same licence.

The licence allows me to have apparently unlimited physical CPU's with 1-6 cores per CPU on an unlimited number of physical servers, but i'm sure it was originally permitted for up to 4 physical cpu's and 1-6 cores per CPU. Product features are up to 256GB memory and 4way Virtual SMP.

Also, I know the Xeons are not VT enabled unfortunately. But strangely I've managed to get some 64bit OS's to run (such as 2003 Server 64Bit running Exchange 2007), but not any linux 64bit OS's (such as Trend Micro IWSVA), so I think i've got the earlier XEON's that are EM64T but not VT enabled.

Cheers

[HughBorg707]

Okay, it looks like the SC1420 is an "interesting machine". You mentioned disabling the CUPID adjustment. I would look through those pages and see if there is another adjustment for multiple CPUs.

That's interesting if you can actually get 64 bit Windows VMs running on it. My 1850s are EM64T as well but no VT. Here's a great link for CPU info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Xeon_microprocessors#

And the adjustment links:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/216435

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1011871#1011871

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/159556?tstart=15

Let me know if any of this hits home.

Hugh

http://www.1zrero1.net

[JJF2010]

Sorted now.

Thought i'd re-investigate the BIOS just in case anyone else has been "fiddling" as the links you provided were for the CPUID Limits which I no longer have the problem with.

Found that the setting for "CPU Count" was disabled, which effectively turned off the second CPU hence why only one CPU detected! Someone definitely fiddling..... Reset back to "on", rebooted and now running Dell PowerEdge SC1420, 12Gb RAM with 2 x 3Ghz Intel Xeons with ESXi 4.

Total Capacity available now for use across VM's is CPU 4188Mhz with 9729Mb RAM. Not brilliant but at least now I can use some affinity to spread VM's across the two physical CPU's!

But thanks for you help.

Cheers

[J1mbo]

If the CPUs are dual-core you should see 4x 3GHz listed. Might be worth re-checking the BIOS and power-cycling the box.

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.

[JJF2010]

It doesn't show 4x cpus, but 2 processor sockets and 4 logical processors, which it was the same when running ESXi 3.5. Screenshot attached

[J1mbo]

Oh okay - these Xeon CPUs are single core then (but with hyper-threading).

http://blog.peacon.co.uk

Please award points to any useful answer.