I have the following 3 servers in an esxi essentials cluster 5.1u1. The issue I am having is I am unable to vmotion guests from/to the 1st server to either the 2nd/3rd. I can do so without problem from/to 2nd/3rd (both 2950III).
Dell R610
CPU - Xeon E5530 - Nehalem Generation?
Bios - 1.2.6 (I know there is a considerably newer version, I am working on getting that updated to 6.3.0, but without being able to fail guests over to the other hosts this requires downtime)
2x Dell 2950III
CPU - Xeon E5405 - Core Generation?
Bios - 2.7.0 (appears to be the latest)
VMware EVC mode is currently disabled. When I click change EVC mode/enable EVC for Intel hosts I receive 6 options -
Merom Generation - host cannot be admitted - for all 3 nodes
Penryn Generation - host cannot be admitted - for R610
Nehalem Generation - host cannot be admitted - for both 2950III
Westmere Generation- host cannot be admitted - for all 3 nodes
Sandy Bridge Generation- host cannot be admitted - for all 3 nodes
Disabled
In trying all 5 of the cpu generation options one or more (some all 3) still show "the host cannot be admitted to the cluster's enhanced vmotion". vMotion compatibilty mode. The host cpu lacks features required by that mode or powered-on or suspended virtual machines on the host may be using cpu features hidden by that mode. So the only option I am allowed to select is disabled.
When I try to vmotion a machine from host1 (R610) to either 2950 it says "the virtual machine requires hardware features that are unsupported or disabled on the target host: SSE4.2, see article 1003212" CPUID details: incompatibility level 0x1 register 'ecx'. When trying the other way around (2950 to R610) it says the same thing.
Thanks!