MacMini 6,2 and VT-x/EPT cpu feature in nested esxi

[gettons]

Hi all,

I am having some issues with MacMini 6,2 ( late 2012 with 3615QM i7 cpu ) and esxi 5.5.0 update 1. I am aware the platform is not in HCL but it seems that most of the people could get around this issue pretty easily.

My setup is ESXi on top of the macmini ( 16gb ram + ssd 400gb + boot from usb where the hypervisor has been installed ) and

2 esxi 5.5.0 update 1 as vms ( nested then ) virtual hardware 10

1 vm which is running on the first esxi at the moment.

VMotion works great, however I wanted to test FT as said and by looking on the internet it looks like I need to add the following in the .vmx file of the esxi vms

vhv.enable = “TRUE”

and

the following for FT

replay.supported = “true”

replay.allowFT = “true”

replay.allowBTOnly = “true”

The problem is that when I then start the vm, I get this warning

Virtualized Intel VT-x/EPT is incompatible with record/replay

Continue without virtualized msg.intel.hvhmmu ?

Again, the cpu should support both vt-x and EPT as per intel doc http://ark.intel.com/products/64900

If I remove the vhv.enable = "TRUE" and reload the vmx then it goes away. I also read that this line is not needed anymore now in 5.5 still I am scratching my head about that warning since the cpu should have those features.

Thanks in advance

[admin]

gettons wrote:

the following for FT

replay.supported = “true”

replay.allowFT = “true”

replay.allowBTOnly = “true”

These settings go in the .vmx file of the nested VM, not the .vmx file of the ESXi VM.

[gettons]

just realized that mate. I am doing it now.

But I cant' still very well understand that when I enable the vhv.enable = "true" it makes the warning to come out. Is that line redundant in 5.5 or what ?

[EDIT]

I might have found when vhv option is useful... just build a 64bit vm and got this error during startup:

Longmode is unsupported. It is required for 64-bit guest OS support. On Intel systems, longmode requires VT-x to be enabled in the BIOS. On nested virtual ESX hosts, longmode requires the "Virtualized Hardware Virtualization" flag to be enabled on the outer VM.

I guess that's required for 64bit guests, but if I enable that I get the warning I was talking about previously.

Thanks

[admin]

gettons wrote:

I guess that's required for 64bit guests, but if I enable that I get the warning I was talking about previously.

Virtualized hardware-assisted virtualization requires EPT.  Replay requires shadow paging.  The two options are incompatible.  However, for your purposes, you want to enable replay for the nested VMs, not for the ESXi VM.  If you remove the replay options from the configuration file for the ESXi VM, you can then enable virtualized hardware-assisted virtualization, and there should be no warning.

If you are still getting a warning after removing the replay options, please post your vmware.log file.

[gettons]

Problem is I am still getting a warning after removing the replay options, I am gonna post the vmware.log file once I get home.

Thanks

[gettons]

I have done some tests and this is the current situation :

1) Installed 5.5.0 update 1 on MacMini 6,2 ( 60 days licence )

2) Checked ( successfully ) that my physical ESXi host supports vhv by browsing to https://IP/mob/?moid=ha-host&doPath=capability

3) Created 2 vas using this tutorial here : http://www.v-front.de/2014/01/how-to-provision-nested-esxi-hosts-on.html .

4) Created cluster which is being managed by vcenter server appliance 5.5 ( a vm inside my physical ESXi ).

5) Able to install CentOS 64bit OS vm in the cluster ( vhv.enable has been added to .vmx of my ESXiS ). No warnings at all.

6) Enabled HA on the cluster

7) Enabled Fault tolerance on the CentOS 64bit vm.

7) Added to .vmx of the guest

replay.supported = “true”

replay.allowFT = “true”

replay.allowBTOnly = “true”

😎 Turn on the vm and get this Error :

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM centos64-test.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Unable to enter Fault Tolerance mode.

Record/Replay is supported for 64-bit virtual machines only on certain CPUs. Canceling Record/Replay.

9) With 32bit guests this does not happen and FT works fine without errors during OS bootup.

P.S. I have logs available if you want me to include them

[admin]

Everything is working as expected.  Nested fault tolerance requires binary translation, and binary translation only works for 32-bit guests.

[gettons]

Right,

so I won't be able to protect 64bit machines with FT in a nested environment ?

[admin · Accepted solution]

That is correct.

[gettons]

thanks a lot mate