VMware vSphere

I have two clusters, one with CPU family 'Haswell' (2013) hosts and one with CPU family 'Broadwell' (2014) hosts. All VMs from each cluster will be migrated to a single new cluster with CPU family 'Ice Lake' hosts. This is how I plan to do the migration...

1. On new cluster enable EVC Haswell mode
2. Migrate VMs from older Haswell cluster
3. On new cluster raise EVC to Broadwell mode
4. Migrate VMs from older Broadwell cluster
5. On new cluster raise EVC to Ice Lake

When raising the EVC mode, the newer CPU features will not be available until the VMs are powered off and on again. I do not plan on powering the VMs off/on until after the migration so basically I'm wondering, should be fine to raise the EVC mode multiple times without powering VMs off/on in between?

Me, personally, never tried that. But it should work. 
What about ESXi versions on that clusters with different CPU generations? 

All hosts are ESXi version 7.0.3

There's absolutely no need for multiple steps.

Set the EVC level on the new cluster to what you want for newly powered on VMs.
VMs that are migrated will - as you already know - keep their current EVC mode until thy are power cycled.

André

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 wrote:

There's absolutely no need for multiple steps.

Set the EVC level on the new cluster to what you want for newly powered on VMs.
VMs that are migrated will - as you already know - keep their current EVC mode until thy are power cycled.

André

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The reason for setting the EVC mode on the new cluster to the same level of the old cluster would be to have a fallback. That way if a VM is migrated to the newer cluster and then powered cycled, and I needed to migrate it back to the old cluster (should the need arise) then I wouldn't have to power it down first.

That of course makes perfect sense.

André