vmotion between ESX 4.1 & ESXi 4.1 failure on identical hardware

[James1955]

I've been running ESX 4.1 for a few months on 6 Dell R710 servers and have been having no vmotion problems, but I have now added 2 additional (identical)Dell R710 servers with ESXi 4.1 on them.

The problem I have is I can't vmotion running servers on to the ESXi servers.

I can vmotion shutdown server on to these ESXi servers no problem, and vmotion running (on ESXi) between these 2 ESXi R710s.

I also can't vmotion running servers (on ESXi) on to the ESX servers.

I get the same error message, re cpu's are different! although they are not.

Many thanks for taking the time to respond to this.

J

[a_p_]

One of the issues which could cause this, is the "NX"/"No Execute disable" BIOS setting. This should be configured the same way (usually "Enabled") on all hosts.

I get the same error message, re cpu's are different! although they are not.

Can you confirm the CPU's are the same model/stepping?

André

[James1955]

I enabled VT under CPU in the bios and have confirmed the No Execute is enabled also when I built the servers. Bare in mind I can vmotion running servers across my two esxi hosts, just not between them and my esx hosts.

Thanks for the reply.

edit

All the servers have the same model/speed processors.

[a_p_]

Which error message/warning do you get when you try to vMotion between the different hosts?

André

[James1955]

Thanks for your help, I'll be back in work tomorrow and will copy the full message down for you first thing.

J

[James1955]

"Host CPU is incompatable with the virtual machines requirements at CPUID level 0x1 register 'ecx'

Then it goes on to say use a cluster with EVC enabled.

Thanks.

[a_p_ · Accepted solution]

This error message usually occurs if the hosts have different BIOS settings or even different BIOS versions.

see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1029785

André

[James1955]

Many thanks for this, I'm marking it correct......as I'm sure it will be a bios version difference, although I can't currently upgrade the bios on the ESX servers, to test this but as soon as I can I'll test this.

Many thanks for the "mega fast" reply on each of my posts

James

[James1955]

I can now confirm this is a BIOS issue.

I upgraded the bios on one of my esx servers to  2.2.10 (the same as the 2 x ESXi servers) and am now able to vmotion between them all.

No server with a bios of less than 2.2.10 is then able to vmotion on to either the ESXi or ESX servers running 2.2.10, so the problem was not ESXi related at all.

I just need to upgrade the bios on all my other running ESX servers to 2.2.10 and I'll be back to what I needed.

Once again many thanks.