Anyone using BL460c blades with 5300 series CPU's and ESX 3.5?

[MR-T]

I noticed the 5300 series CPU isn't supported on quad core chips in the BL460c servers, but the 5400 is.

Trouble is, you can pick up the 5300 CPU's in bucket loads, but I can't get hold of 5400 in a hurry and I need to start quickly.

I know the deal with certification for support and once VMware get round to testing, the 5300's will make it to the HCL on BL460c server.

I'm just looking for real world experience. Anyone tried/tested these and have any issues.

I'm not expecting any issues as the DL360G5, ML370G5 and BL480c are all certified with the 5300, but you never know.

[amolina]

We are using BL460c with E5345 CPUs for all of our ESX 3.5 servers, and so far so good except for x64 support. I have opened another thread for the x64 problem (http://communities.vmware.com/message/853987) but we have not found any solution yet.

Regards.

[jrenton]

Have been running ESX 3.5 in our test environment on DL360G5 with the 5300 processors for the last 3 weeks without any issues. The 360G5 is on the HCL so can't see any reason for the equivalent blade should not be on there.

[amolina]

Just to inform you, I have discovered how to allow Win2K3 x64 to install as a guest in these machines. As I have explained in the previously referred thread:

"I finally found what was causing the problem, even if I do not understand why: The "Options / Paravirtualization / Support VMI Paravirtualization" setting does not allow the Windows Server 2003 R2 installation detect the virtual CPU as an x64 capable one."

Regards,

Alberto

[zippy_thewonder]

Yo Disco Stu!

I'm currently using the X5365 CPU's on the BL460c G1, and running both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems with no issues so far...

[bradmarshall-cq]

FWIW, we've currently got some BL460g1 blades with x5355 CPUs and they appear to work fine. This appears to be an old thread that has been brought up again, as the BL460g1 with x5300 series CPUs seem to be on the HCL.

--

Brad Marshall

Senior Systems Engineer

Central Queensland University

[chrwei]

I know this is an old thread, but one thing here went without comment that I needs it.

Windows does not support the paravirt that VMWare uses. Enabling it will cause Windows to find an unknown memory controller, and I don't know what that does to performance, but it can't improve it.

I have also had problems using paravirt with 64bit linux guests on Intel CPU's, but not on AMD's. not sure why.