VMotion Issues

[phil435]

Hello All. I recently added a new host into my cluster and I am having issues with vmotion. Currently I have a Dell PE R620 with an Intel Xeon E5-2640 and added a Dell PE R730 with an Intel Xeon E5-2643 v3. The error occurs during the compatibility check and I receive:

Does this mean that I need to use EVC in the cluster? Are the instructions sets between the two processors above causing the issue? I know this is probably straight forward but I wanted to ask in case there was a bios setting or something else that need to be changed to fix this.

The old host is 5.5.0 1746018 and the new host is 5.5.0 2068190 if that makes a difference and vCenter is 5.5.0 1945287. I also have a yellow exclamation mark on the new host but no alarms. Any ideas?

thanks!

[rcporto]

This vMotion issue is due different CPU processors and if you want make vMotion between all hosts in your cluster you will need to enable EVC in your cluster.

Take a look at the vSphere 5.5 documentation: Enable EVC on an Existing Cluster in the vSphere Web Client

[phil435]

Thanks for the reply Richardson. The R620 has an Intel Sandy Bridge chip and the R730 has an Intel Haswell chipset. Do I set the EVC mode to Sandy Bridge? I don't see Haswell listed. Also do I need to power off all VM's?

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

According to VMware Compatibility Guide: System Search for both CPUs "Sandy-Bridge" is the highest common EVC mode. Since this mode is also the "native" mode for the R620 hosts, all VMs which were initially powered on one of these hosts should not need to be powerd off, i.e. only the VMs that were powered on on the new host need to be powered off to ensure they don't use any instructions which are not available anymore with the EVC mode (from the documentation:"Power off all the virtual machines on the hosts with feature sets greater than the EVC mode")

André

[phil435]

Thanks Andre. I did look at that guide as well and got the same understanding. I just wanted a confirmation from someone else as well . So since all of my VM's are on the R620 currently, then I shouldn't need to power off any VM's? All I need to do is set the EVC mode to Sandy Bridge, correct? It does say that the validation succeeded when I click on the Sandy Bridge mode.

[a_p_]

Go for it

André

[phil435]

Thanks guys! That worked.