Cisco B200 M4 and VMware Haswell EVC Mode

[kirk.frankovich]

Greetings,

I have a new VMware cluster consisting of four B200 M4 UCS blades all with Intel Haswell CPUs (2.3GHZ, 12 core).  I am trying to enable EVC mode on the cluster (just in case of future expansion).  VMware keeps telling me I am missing features, but as far as i can tell everything is enabled in the BIOS.  The one thing i don't have in these blades is the TPM module, but VMware told me that shouldn't matter.

Anyone else run into issues with the B200 M4 and ESXi?

I am running vCenter 6, but ESXi 5.5 U2.

Thank you!

[Keny Perez]

are you trying to create a new cluster of only M4 servers or trying to add the M4 servers to an existing cluster?

-Kenny

[kirk.frankovich]

This is a brand new cluster (and a new UCS implementation).

vCenter 6 with ESXi 5.5 U2 on all four blades.  Running 2.2(3f) and latest BIOS on M4s.

[Keny Perez]

did you try to setup the cluster to the minimum common factors so that it does not try to only request the same features for the CPUs?

-Kenny

[kirk.frankovich]

VMware got back to me and confirmed that even if you upgrade vCenter to version 6, Haswell EVC mode is only supported if your ESXi servers are also on version 6.

In my case my servers are still on 5.5 due to compatibility issues with Veeam.