ESXi 5.5 limited to 8 cores per VM?

[usao]

Im running the free version of ESXi 5.5, and seem to be limited to 8 cores per VM.

Is there a license to increase this limit to 16 or 32 cores? Im running on a HP DL980 with 128 cores and didn't want to have to create 16 different VM's to allocate all 128 cores.

If there is a license, how much does it cost?

[BenLiebowitz]

What hardware version are the VMs running?  They need to be running Virtual Hardware 10 to utilize the additional vCPUs.

Here are the limits to the free version of 5.5.

• vSphere 5.5 supports 320 Physical CPUs per ESXi host
• ESXi host supports 4 TB of Memory in vSphere 5.5
• 16 NUMA Nodes per host in vSphere 5.5
• 4096 Maximum vCPUs per host
• Support for 40 GBps Physical Network adapters
• 62 TB VMDK virtual disk support
• Supports 16 GB FibreChannel end-to-end Support
• Increased VMFS Heap, 64TB open VMDK per host max
• Virtual Machine Hardware Version 10 in vSphere 5.5

[usao]

Im not seeing anything higher than "Virtual Machine Version: 8".

http://i.imgur.com/FfKdwIi.png

Im running VMware ESXi Version 5.5.0 Build 2068190.

[BenLiebowitz · Accepted solution]

Are you running the latest version of ESXi 5.5?  If you're running Update 2, you will be able to upgrade to version 10 (power off VM, right click and the option to upgrade virtual hardware will be there.) 

[usao]

Ok, when I right-clicked, it said that I could upgrade virtual HW, and I selected "Ok".

However, now I am not able to manage the VM from the vsphere client, it sais something about a web client instead? Where do I find the web client?

Im kinda stuck now, because I can't do anything to the VM from vsphere client.

[BenLiebowitz]

That's why I suggested you upgrade to Update 2.  Update 2 adds the feature of being able to manage the hardware version 10 VMs from the vSphere Client.  Before that, VMware wanted you to use the vCenter Web Client.  As you're running the free version, you're probably not running vCenter.

[usao]

Is this something in the client side or the server side, which is not allowing me to manage the VM anymore?

It's looking like it did upgrade to version 10, but the client is the one having the issue.

Is it possible to upgrade the client separately, and if so, where can I find that update?

I got the ESXi image from HP, as it has all their drivers built in. Ill have to see if they have an image for Update 2.

[usao]

Another dumb question... How does one go about upgrading ESXi without bricking the existing VMs?

I have no problem with an outage, just don't want to loose the existing environment during the upgrade...

Do I have to copy out everything from the datastore and then reload it after the upgrade or is there a cleaner way?

[BenLiebowitz]

They should have one with Update 2, however you can download the update directly from VMware and upgrade manually. 

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=205835...

[BenLiebowitz]

The VMFS volume should be separate from where the OS is installed.  When you begin the installer, it should recognize an existing OS is installed and give you the option to upgrade.

[usao]

Im not sure how the vmware installer partitioned the disk, but the host has 1 internal volume which was used to install the environment. It's holding the OS as well as "datastore1".

Im not too worried, worst case I should make a backup of all the VM's anyhow and can push them back out again if there are issues.

It's really a matter of figuring out how to get a copy of the software at this point.

I have someone researching the HP site to see if they can find an update there.

We had to use the HP specific version because the vanilla esxi did not recognize parts of the HP DL980 G7 box.

[BenLiebowitz]

This link might help.

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?productId=353&downloadGroup=HP-ESXI-5.5.0U2-GA

If not, here:

HP and VMware’s infrastructure as a service solution | HP® Official Site