Run esx4i on esx4i

[ceemour]

Here is a link to how to get it working.

It works for me using Intel chip ie q6600

does not work using amd ie dual opteron 2350, this one complains about not supporting b2 or something similar, opteron 2350 is b3 so am not sure why it is complaining

has anyone else struck this issue and can assist

chris

[Steve_Tron]

Chris,

What was the performance like?

Regards

[admin]

I believe the Opteron 2350 came in several different revisions. A B3 revision part is family 16, model 2, stepping 3. Family 16, model 2, steppings 1, 2, and 10 all suffer from TLB erratum 298 and are not supported.

[ceemour]

These are revision B3 opterons so I do not understand the B2 reference.

Performance on the Q6600 at work is good, well it is a bit slow as the bare metal esxi4 has only 2GB of memory and the workstation esxi4 needed 2GB of memory but it worked and I added a windows 2003 guest to it.

Am awaiting the parts for a full q6600 setup at work ie 8GB memory and more disks, 2 500GB sata for raid 1 to hold esxi4 and its backups, 6 sata for raid 10 for vms, raid controller intel servraid 8s ( I also use Intel SRCSATAWB for other esxi's)

Have attached screenshots from the failed install

Require more esxi4's at home as i only have 2 pc's for esxi4 and need at least 3 or more to test distributed switch ie cisco nexus 1000v and since one pc has 2 quad core optys and 16gb memory i thought I could set up 2 esxi4's on it using 2cpu and 4gb memory each.

Have added the following lines to the config

monitor_control.enable_svm TRUE

monitor_control.restrict_backdoor TRUE

monitor_control.vt32 TRUE

[admin]

These are revision B3 opterons so I do not understand the B2 reference.

I think you are confusing 3rd generation Opterons with Revision B3 parts. What is the stepping of your processors, as reported by 'cat /proc/cpuinfo'? If the family is 16, the model is 2, and the stepping is 2, then these are Revision B2 parts.

[ceemour]

These are Revision B3 barcelonas pretty sure as i definitely rejected the B2 revisions because ot the tlb bug

tried to list the cpuinfo but it does not exist on esxi4

so moved the vm to the phenom 9550 running esx4

and get same result

attached is the output from cat /proc/cpuinfo on the phenom 9550

processor : 0

vendor_id : AuthenticAMD

cpu family : 16

model : 2

model name : AMD Phenom(tm) 9550 Quad-Core Processor

stepping : 3

cpu MHz : 2200.045

cache size : 512 KB

fpu : yes

fpu_exception : yes

cpuid level : 5

wp : yes

flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp lm 3dnowext 3dnow constant_tsc pni cx16 popcnt lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy altmovcr8 abm sse4a misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw

bogomips : 4405.07

TLB size : 1024 4K pages

clflush size : 64

cache_alignment : 64

address sizes : 48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual

power management: ts ttp tm stc 100mhzsteps hwpstate

[admin · Accepted solution]

Are you using EVC to specify "AMD Opteron Generation 3" VMotion compatibility for the physical host? This EVC setting will cause all processors to masquerade as revision B2 parts as a lowest common denominator. I believe this is supposed to be changed to B3 in the future, but for now, you should disable EVC for any AMD hosts on which you want to run ESX as a guest.

[ceemour]

yes I am

roger will try that and repost

also I restarted the opteron host and reconfirmed that they are indeed stepping b3 processors

all good now and points awarded