CPU incompatible for vmotion after Dell 2950 BIOS update. (EVC Enabled)

[MikeS1983]

Hi All,

I have an issue I hope someone will be able to shed some light on.

I have an EVC enabled 6 host cluster. Hosts 1 to 5 were always compatible with each other as they had Intel Zeon x53xx CPU's. A 6th host was built for the cluster which had Intel Zeon x54xx CPU which was the reason for EVC. The host servers are Dell 2950's.

I have just updated the BIOS on host 1 of the cluster from v 1.2 upto 2.5. This has caused the CPU's to become incompatible with any other host. If I try to manually vmotion a VM to host 1 I get the CPU masking error, but it does give me to option to proceed. This does seem to work. Subsequent migrations of a VM which has already been migrated once to the host no longer throw up the error.

Any ideas?

Mike.

[AndreTheGiant]

BIOS new version change the NX feature, so if you upgrade from 1.x to 2.x to can loose Vmotion.

But if you have an EVC cluster you must be able to move the VM.

Is possible that you cannot move with vmotion a VM from outside the cluster into the cluster. In this case just power off, use cold migrate, and power on into the cluster.

Be sure to have all finally your poweredge witch the same BIOS versione (an if possible also the same BCM and other firmwares).

Andrea

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers

[MikeS1983]

Hi Andrea,

The problem was that during the BIOS update it had disabled the XD setting. After setting this again in the BIOS VMotion works fine again.

Thanks for your reply.

Mike.

[AndreTheGiant]

You're welcome.

(I've got the same problem one year ago from upgrading BIOS 1.x to 2.x)

Andrea

**if you found this or any other answer useful please consider allocating points for helpful or correct answers