Unable to start a Vm with more than 1 CPU socket added

[jomalin]

I have set up a few ESXi 5.5 boxes with the free license in the past few weeks, they have all been without issue until now. All 4 servers have the exact same hardware

Environment:

Dell Poweredge T620

2 Intel E5-2630 CPU's

40GB DDR3 ECC RAM

ESXi is installed on 2x 146GB 15K SAS Drives RAID-1

Datastore for VM's are 8x 600GB 10K SAS Drives RAID-10

Guest OS is Server2012r2 on all VM's

The 3 previous ESXi installs were done with Dell's customized ESXi 5.5 with no issue.

The 4th is where I am having issues. I have used the Following ESXi installs just in case there is a bug somewhere

ESXi 5.5 from VMware

ESXi 5.5 Customized by Dell

ESXi 5.5 U1 From VMware

No matter which verison of the ESXi I use I cannot get a VM to start with more than 1 CPU socket added to it. The VM doesn't even start the VMWare BIOS. I have tried the EFI Bios as well with no luck.The error message I get in the events is "VMware ESX unrecoverable error: (vcpu-X) vcpu-X:VM-entry failed; VMCS Valid (error code 8)". The vcpu-X is always a different one. I have attached the log file that gets created. If I give the VM only 1 CPU It starts just fine. I am at a loss as to what the issue could be.

[jomalin]

I ran dell lifecycle diagnostics, as well as the OMSA DSET live disc and both came back no errors. I updated all firmware and the BIOS to the most updated version and the issue persists

[srwsol]

Just for the heck of it, have you tried setting up the VM with 1 CPU socket with multiple cores?   I don't think there is any difference performance wise in setting up a VM with 2 single core CPU sockets versus 1 CPU socket with 2 cores.  I suspect that the option to do it either way is so that if you have a VM that runs software that has licensing restrictions based on CPUs or cores, you can set it up the way you want. 

[jomalin]

I can do 1 socket with as many cores as I would like, as soon as I change it to 2 sockets the VM will no start, no matter how many cores I use.

Not sure how the hypervisor would handle this, but I usually do 2 sockets and 4 cores for my File Server VM's. Since the physical hardware is 2 CPU's and 6 cores each that works. Could I do a single socket with 8 cores and have it still work properly?

[jomalin · Accepted solution]

Issue is resolved. I grabbed another server with identical hardware, verified it worked properly, then started swapping parts between them. Turned out to be CPU1. Once that was replaced from a working server I had no issues. Warranty call has been done.

Thanks for all the help!