vSphere Appliance, ESXi and EVC

[CTi1284]

Hi,

we have upgraded from vSphere 5.5 on WIndows to vSphere 6.7 Appliance. For this we have done the following steps:

1. Install 2 ESXi 6.7 Standalone hosts

2. Install Appliance 6.0 on the first 6.7 host

3. Connect 5.5 ESXi Servers to appliance

4. Update ESXi Servers 5.5 to 6.0

5. Upgrade Appliance to 6.7 with deploying the 6.7 Appliance on the second 6.7 host

   ---> Here the upgrade has created a VM for the Appliance with EVC-Mod "Intel Broadwell", don't know why. The deployment of the appliance 6.0 has not set EVC-Mod on the Appliance VM.

Now the problem is that i cannot migrate the appliance to our cluster because there the EVC-Mode is not supported.

If i'm right i have to disable / configure EVC Mod on the VM but i cannot do this via vSphere because i have to shutdown the VM (but there is the appliance running...).

From the gui of the standalone host with vm offline i cannot find a point to configure EVC Mod of the vm.

Is there a way to (un)set the EVC Mod?

Thank in advance

Christian

[MohamadAlhousse]

Try to take your hosts with running VMs out of the cluster to the datacenter level, then disable the EVC mode on the cluster level, then add the hosts back to the cluster.

[IRIX201110141]

With vSphere 6.7 you can set EVC on Cluster and (thats the new part) also on VM level.  Question is how to remove EVC on the VCSA VM. Did you test to shutdown the VM and see if you can reset EVC in the HostClient?

If not:

1. Place one Host out of the current Cluster and create a Cluster with the right EVC  Mode. Move the Host into that Cluster as a single member

2. You can "clone" your running VCSA and try to disable EVC on this one. Than shutdown the running VCSA and start the Clone

otherwise

2. Shutdown the VCSA and unregister the VM from the Host. Register the VM on the Standalone Host and start the VM. Now you can configure the existing Cluster

Notes:

- Again EVC on VM level is a new feature

- You can enable or increase EVC during run time with running VMs on a cluster as long as the new EVC Mode contains all CPU Features from the previous one. In the past i only can remember to two things

1. AMD have removed the 3DNow Extension from newer CPUs

2. You have mitigate some of your Intel Hosts(older ones) against Spectre&Meltdown and now these older CPUs contains Features your newer CPU doesnt have

- If a VM starts on a Host CPU with fewer feature CPU features a vMotion to another Host is possible. But you canot migrate to a CPU with fewer features as you already use

- Same Server models can be incompatible when it comes to EVC when they have different BIOS/Microcode updates

Regards,
Joerg

[CTi1284]

Thank you for your help but i read the answers after i had a own solution.

The easiest and fastest solution for me was

1. Create a Backup with the vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface

2. Shutdown the vVCSA

3. start a backup recovery with the vcsa ui Installer and choose an ESXi in the cluster as target instead the standalone host

Regards,

Christian

[NathanosBlightc]

How could you set a cluster as the backup destination, when it's management node (VCSA) is still offline? (step 2 on your solution)

I think the MohamadAlhoussein's solution is the easiest and safest method without need to interrupting the VMs operation

[CTi1284]

you are right, i have corrected this point to "choose an ESXi in the cluster ".