Adding New Hardware to an Existing Cluster

[Roman_Romano]

We have a 6 node cluster thats built around Intel E5420 CPUs (HP DL380G5)

Q. Do we need to buy servers with E5420 CPUs in order to maintain vMotion capability or can we get later Intel CPU technology (inside HP DL380G6)?

Many thanks all

[NTurnbull]

Hi, take a look at and for Intel CPU compatibility

Thanks,

Neil

[AndreTheGiant · Accepted solution]

You can use EVC cluster feature to "normalize" CPU and use VMotion.

Which subversion of 3.5 do you have? (U4?)

Andre

[TobiasKracht]

Migrations Prevented Due to CPU Mismatch - How to Override Masks

StarWind Software R&D

[Roman_Romano]

All fully patched to the latest update/patch releases. However, when i go into the settings of the cluster, the option to enable EVC is greyed out saying that one or more of my hosts don't support EVC! All 9 nodes are HP DL380G5 with 32GB RAM and 2 x quad core Intel Xeon E5335 2GHz CPUs. Our second cluster is the same except those nodes have 2 x quad core Intel Xeon E5420 2.5GHz. When originally configuring the hosts, i went into the BIOS and enabled the advanced CPU features (VT i think??)

Am i missing something??

Many thanks

[AndreTheGiant]

You must enable Intel VT on all ESX.

Then create a NEW emply cluster and enable EVC.

Free a ESX with VMotion, put in maintenance mode and move to the new cluster. Then exit from maintence mode.

Then use VMotion to move some VMs to the new cluster and free a new ESX.

And so on...

Andre

[Roman_Romano]

YES I WAS MISSING SOMETHING!

In the BIOS i had not enabled 'No-execute Memory Protection'. Ding this enabled me to move the node to a Cluster with EVC enabled

many thanks