Enhanced VMotion
Posted: July 6, 2009 Filed under: vblog 1 Comment »EVC (Enhanced VMotion Compatibility) is a feature in ESX Clusters that allows you to VMotion among different processors of the same family. To enable this feature, you need to start with a new cluster and add your hosts in after verifying they have the correct settings turned on in the BIOS.
It’s common practice to turn Virtualization on in the advanced CPU settings before building a new host. On some hosts, such as HP, the “No Execute” (also referred to as NX or XD) bit needs to be enabled in the BIOS as well.
There’s a lot of potential for using EVC between hosts of the same processor family. Following are some great links with more detail about EVC, its use cases, and some intel compatibility specifications.
http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/56292/understanding-vmware-evc
http://www.vmguru.nl/wordpress/2009/06/vmware-evc-cluster-what-is-that/
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1991
K