Cannot vmotion on new IBM x3650 servers
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The newer BIOS on IBM x3650 breaks vmotion between server with identical hardware. I received following error message while doing vmotion of guests from ESX host running on x3650 to another IBM x3650.
| Warning: Migration from esxhost365x1 to esxhost365x2: Migration will cause the virtual machine’s configuration to be modified, to preserve the CPU feature requirements for its guest OS. Error: Unable to migrate from esxhost365x1 to esxhost365x2: The CPU of the host is incompatible with the CPU feature requirements of the virtual machine; problem detected at CPUID level 0×80000001 register ‘edx’. |
The VMware ESX esxhost365x1 is an IBM x3650 7979 Quad Core CPU server and esxhost365x2 is also am IBM x3650 Quad code CPU server. The error messages looks like CPU related, comparing these new x3650 server with older x3650 where vmotion works fine we figured out it is because newer x3650 BIOS version is latest then the older x3650.
This was a very helpful tip and tempting enough to compare BIOS setting on both the servers. It turned out to be related to Execute Disable Bit CPU settings in BIOS which for some reason was disabled on newer IBM x3650 . Once I set this feature to “enabled”, I was able to eliminate the error message.
so if you can not do vmotion on IBM x3650 servers then check out BIOS settings in there.
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4 Comments on this post
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BK said:
I had the same issue – this BIOS changed worked for me. Very odd though, as the ESX farm had multiple x3650 machines, all with the same BIOS level and settings – just one server would not allow vmotion to occur. Works now!
Thanks!July 31st, 2009 at 3:40 pm -
JF said:
I had the same issue today, your tip saved my weekend !!!!!!
Thanks a lot !!August 7th, 2009 at 7:20 am -
J.J. said:
Good catch but you actually want that disabled on all of your hosts if you plan on using Enhanced Vmotion Compatibility mode (mixing different CPU steppings or families together, e.g. adding a newer M2 to an existing x3650 farm/cluster):
EVC covers your VMs from the Host level: Put your ESX hosts in to maintenance mode one at a time and make a bios setting change, once the entire farm/cluster is changed, you should then be able to enable Enhanced Vmotion Compatibility (EVC), but you must be on ESX 3.5 Update 2 or higher to use this mode. In the Bios, Execute Protection is Intel eXecute Disable (XD) on Intel processors. You’ll need that set to disable for Virtual Center to see your ESX host as EVC compatible.
Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003212VMotion CPU Compatibility Requirements for Intel Processors
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1991EVC and CPU Compatibility FAQ
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1005764Vmotion info guide:
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vmotion_info_guide.pdfOctober 8th, 2009 at 1:35 pm
[...] Bit in the CPU settings was disabled. This can cause vMotion to fail as described in this article here . So you would want to enable the Execute Disable [...]