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rommelh23
Contributor
Contributor

EVC Question

Hi Guys,

We are planning to add new servers to our existing vSphere 5 environment. We have 3 BL680c G5 (Intel Xeon E7330 processor) and planning to add a few BL680cG7 (E7-4800 Westmere family). Will EVC allow me to vmotion between them? Any other things I need to know before doing EVC? Thanks!

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beckham007fifa

check for the processor compatability for EVC, if yes then you can vmotion between two disimilar (but EVC supported) cpus.

Regards, ABFS
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arturka
Expert
Expert

Hi

You have to enable EVC baseline for intel processors called Intel® "Merom" Generation (see link below) both processors are compatibile with this baseline.

Remember to enable EVC BEFORE you add new servers into existing cluster

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100321...

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
rommelh23
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Artur,

Thanks for the info. If I enable EVC before adding the new servers, then it will add perfectly fine without shutting down the VMs? As i am seeing some posts to create a new cluster and enable EVC and then slowly start to migrate the hosts to the new cluster.

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arturka
Expert
Expert

Thanks for the info. If I enable EVC before adding the new servers, then it will add perfectly fine without shutting down the VMs?

you are welcome, hmm ... I'm always forgetting how I did that, (I have to do some test in my lab and document it) my answer is - you can test by yourself - it is a harmless operation. Enable EVC, add new host into existing cluster and try to make vMotion - the worst case scenario is you will get incompatibility error before migration starts. Let me know what's results. If you don't want to risk, I can do some test in my Lab and let you know.

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
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rommelh23
Contributor
Contributor

Can you help test it? Since I'm still waiting for the new servers to arrive. Thanks again !Smiley Happy

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arturka
Expert
Expert

Hi

Sorry  for getting to you back so late, I did testing, no outage for VM when you enable EVC before you add new server into cluster

http://vmwaremine.com/2012/06/12/how-to-deal-with-evc/

Artur

VCDX77 My blog - http://vmwaremine.com
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