Question: Wrong Number of Cores shows up in vSphere Client

[samvirt]

Hi all,

I put together my vSphere Server recently but strangely, the client keeps displaying the wrong number of cores.

I have a E3-1275L v3 3Ghz which is definitely 4 cores, (1 socket), which should come out to 8 logical processers, but I'm getting just half of that. Does anyone know why the client keeps displaying 2 cores and not 4?

Rather annoying, I've gone through my BIOS for anything that might be affecting it but can't seem to find out what it is.

Sam

[virtualg_uk]

What vendor and model is the server?

[samvirt]

The server is not vendor specific; built it myself.

Motherboard: Intel Server board S1200V3RPL

Chipset: C226 (says the manual) C224 (says the ebay seller)

CPU: Intel 3rd Gen Xeon E3-1275L

RAM: 32GB ECC unb

Thanks!

[fescaros]

What happens if you boot a live Linux CD and do a "cat /proc/cpuinfo". Do you see all 8 cores that you are expecting or just the 4 ESXi is showing as well?

[samvirt]

When booting a parted magic i believe the number of cores showed up as 4. Each core had a different frequency. And some of the hardware wasnt consistent with the board.

Also, this board is supposed to have 6 SATA3 ports but in the bootscreen (after POST) it says it has 4 SATA3 and 2 SATA2. Also, no tag number or serial number is shown in BIOS setup.

Also, the system fans keep showing errors in vsphere even though they seem to be running fine.

Im curious as to whether this is a HW problem or a SW problem because the HW readings just arent reflected correctly on the client. An additional oddity is the NIC profiles. I have 2 intel i350 t4s attached to my PCIe slots and it shows that SRV-IO isnt supported for any of them. nor is direct IO.

Please help. Thanks

[samvirt]

Sorry i didnt answer your question. CD drive doesnt work with board (doesnt boot with it connected) so im limited to USB. Yesterday i could use USB to boot the system but somehow for the past 30 min none of my usb ports seem to work. Doesnt even show up on the boot sequence like it did previously.

No more USB boot support? Wonder how the BIOS changed.... Also the system time is incorrect. I took a picture just because i was so shocked; all my VM were showing the correct time. Strange

[virtualg_uk]

It custom built, then it wont be on the VMware HCL so is technically unsupported as this build has not been testes so there could be any number of bugs causing this.

Whats the max cores you can add to a VM? - Maybe it's just a GUI issue?

[samvirt]

All the components should comply with the list. They are all server hardware that state that they are esxi compatible. This includes all the components including the NIC card

[samvirt]

What would explain the system clock being at a different time zone along when all the VMs have a different time? Is it normal for the VMs who are set to have the same time as the host to ALL reflect a different time? And all the NICs to not support native functions like SRV IO? And to have BIOS shut off USB booting... And to show that it has 4 sata3 and 2 sata2 ports when the chipset clearly supports 6 sata3 ports?

Please help.

[virtualg_uk]

The first thing I would do it update the BIOS and firmware on everything. Then ensure you have the correct drivers installed for all the hardware.

What you are seeing is not normal, especially with the time. Is the host configured for NTP to a reliable source?

Some BIOS will have USB boot disabled by default, this isn't a fault of ESXi

[samvirt]

Thanks for the reply. BIOS settings show USB as bootable. Firmware shouldnt be a problem because it was functioning fine until a few days ago, but I am going to try updating when i get back from work.

I am curious about the file system and partitioning for esxi server (when installed). I will attach a picture when I get to a computer to upload; how its organized as I understand the footprint is supposed to be very small. The use of FAT 16 for multiple partitions and then a large vfss partition.

I was looking at the logs and it seems there have been multiple connections via SSH which wasnt me. Hoping its just a software problem, i took the ssd with ESXi installed on and tried taking a look via parted magic.

Do you know how to read these log files? I can mail them to you or upload them.

Thanks