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jkgraham
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Adding a member to the cluster

I will be adding another member to an ESX cluster. We are in the process of making the decision on hardware. In its current state the cluster has 3 identical hosts. Dell PowerEdge 2950s each with 2x Intel 5130 dual-core procs. I am looking into adding the next member with 2x Intel 53xx quad-core procs. All members will have 16GB of RAM. Based on the compatibility matrices I have seen, this should not be a problem for VMotion or HA. I am concerned about the the Mhz differences based on info I found in this thread

http://communities.vmware.com/message/751706#751706

According to the thread it seems the best thing to do in this situation is to limit the vCPUs to the lowest common denominator in CPU speeds across the cluster. Unless of course, there are certain VMs that will absolutely need the extra Mhz from the newer procs. In this case we just deal with the consequences. I am sure others have run into this issue since the post I referenced. What are you guys doing?

Second,

I do not believe any CPU masking will be necessary for VMotion between the 51xx and 53xx processors. Am I correct on this?

Last option is to just use the same processors we used in the current cluster members. I am just trying to get our best bang for the buck.

Thanks for the help.

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