This is my third post in a series of articles on some workarounds and things I had to look into when doing a recent vSphere 5.5 U2 deployment. You In can find my previous articles here and here. In this episode I’m covering EVC, Host Profile Compliance Checks and ESXi Hosts and Active Directory Authentication.
VMware Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
Wondering which EVC Intel mode (Merom, Penryn, Nehalem, Westmere, Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge) to use with your vCenter cluster? It depends. This KB article provides a good outline of your options. Note that in vCenter Server 5.1 and 5.5, the Intel “Ivy Bridge” Generation option is only displayed in the Web Client. That’s the man trying to keep you down ;)
But how do I set EVC on the cluster when vCenter is virtual and running in the cluster? As the cluster is no longer the boundary for vMotion, one way to do this is to create a new empty cluster. Add your first host and setup as appropriate. Then enable EVC and vMotion the first guest into the cluster and you’ll be good to go. If you can’t vMotion across clusters because VMs are using various features of the CPU (a more likely scenario), you’ll need to use the method outlined in the following article – Enabling EVC on a cluster when vCenter Server is running in a virtual machine. It’s a bit of a pain, particularly if you’re using Distributed vSwitch, but it works well enough. And when VMware say they recommend you change your VM to standard vSwitch – it’s a good idea to take their advice.
VMware also have a pretty useful FAQ on EVC and CPU Compatibility that you can access here.
Host Profile Compliance Checks
If you’re running Host Profiles at the cluster level, you may find that even if the host is compliant, it fails on Fault Tolerance checks. If you’re not using FT, disable those checks. Because we all live for green lights. Right-click the cluster and click Edit Settings > VMware HA > Advanced Options. You’ll need to add in a field and set it to false. Details on how to do this can be found here.
ESXi Hosts and Active Directory Authentication
Want to join your ESXi host to an Active Directory domain? Good idea. You’ll need this KB article. Be sure you’ve got Config.HostAgent.plugins.hostsvc.esxAdminsGroup set correctly, or you’ll have a difficult time getting in with your AD credentials. If you have issues, you can try restarting LDAP or forcing an update on the DC that you configured the ESXi host to look at. I found this article useful.
Okay, so hopefully that was useful for someone. More to follow …
