Intel Xeon 54xx vmotion compatibility

[olor]

Hello.

As I understand - vmotion on same CPU family must work without problem.

We got 3 nodes with Xeon 5410 and 1 node with Xeon 5430.

vmotion from 5410 to 5430 work`s good.

But it don`t work from 5430 to 5410 with NX/XD incompatibility.

Hiding a NX/XD flag helps but it is not very good resolution for us.

2 question:

1) Is vmotion on same CPU family must work without problem?

2) What we lose if turn off NX/XD flag on every VM?

3) NX/XD hiding is worse or better then EVC?

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

NX/XD is only a CPU feature, but there are others (like SSE).

So the right solution is EVC at cluster level or CPUID mask at VM level.

I suggest the EVC solution is very simple to implement.

Create a new empty cluster, enable EVC, move each ESX in the new cluster (the ESX must be in maintenance mode).

See also: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1005764

Andre