Vmotion Compatibility

Hello John,

I`ve checked my compability list (Dell ones and external) and I could not find a v-motion compability between the 71XX series and 73XX INTEL series processors, but you can find a "workaround" , a V-Motion compabilty does not mean that the vmtion does not work, only the registers are the issue and you can disable the cpu registers to make the cpus compatible, but this is a hard work to do with a lot of testing, refer http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1991 for more informations and keep in mind that the change of cpu registers are partially not supported. also, a "DO IT YOURSELF" solution is not the goal to reach from my poinr of view.
the EVC feature currently only support 45 nm CPU`s like Harpertown, Wolfdale, Dunnington and will , for sure, also support upcomming 45 nm cpus, the 7130 is a 64 nm CPU.

More infos about CPU`s and specification from INTEL can be found at http://processorfinder.intel.com/

I would not recommend you suggested solution ; what about to use the pe 6850 for other single applications like database and build up a 2 or better 3 node esx cluster with 45 nm cpu types ? also if building up a new ESX enviroment I also recommend to take a look on PE R905 or R805 , both servers are AMD based , but have got a good performance/price competition as well as a good vmotion compability, got space for RAM and also have got more nics coming with.
These are only recommendations, for an exact solution I need more detailed infos like used storage, how many Servers, special apps which should be virtualized, usage of special hardware like USB dongles or RS 232 , backup , etc.

I hope this helps you out

greeting from germany

Marcus

Thanks a lot Marcus, that was very usefull, just managed to get one 6850 with 7140 proc and that should not have problem with the 7130 series they have :-)

FYI, the vMotion Compatability guide that the Dell Virtualization Solutions Engineering team produces is found here -- http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/solutions/vmotion_compatibility_matix.pdf

They update it when we release new servers, but keep the name of the document the same, so the link should always be good.

Scott

Thats for ESx 3 We have a different doc for 3.5 which really does not give the cpu Compatibility table.

Thanks
AJ

Any plans to update this doc to show ESX 3.5 compatibility, or has the grid not changed?

Chris

This is the latest - Nov 2008 - http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/eslvmwre/AdditionalDocs/VMotion_Matrix/vmotion.pdf