If you don’t know what is VMware EVC or you need to find out more about it, please look at my last post VMware EVC enhanced VMotion Compatibility enable VMware VMotion across CPU generations
Ok, if you had read that and now wondering how to get it setup without having to shutdown your virtual machines. Then this small tip is for you.
As you know & I had mentioned that in my previous post on this topic that VMware will request you to shutdown all the virtual machines you have running on the cluster you want to enable VMware EVC for. To avoid having to shutdown your virtual machines what you can do is to create a temp cluster with few temp servers on it & VMotion your VMs to these servers. Enable VMWare EVC on your evacuated production cluster. Then again VMotion the Virtual Machines back to your original production cluster.
Although this seems to work, If possible to take the downtime & follow the proper procedure then you might be better of doing just that. Good luck and hope this help.
4 responses to “How to enable VMware EVC on VMware vSphere & VI3 without downtime”
Hi,
seem above method does not work in my environment.
Hi Khairul,
I would appreciate it if you actually provide a bit more info about your enviornment:
Which ESX or ESXi version are you running?
Which vCenter version are you running?
What is the specs of the hardware you are running your ESX on?
Thanks,
Eiad
This seems like its not working if your servers are upgraded to vsphere 4.1 b/c i can’t vmotion to non-EVC cluster to an EVC enabled cluster…
Hi William,
Yes, I have noticed some more restriction on VMotion and removing hosts from cluster in vSphere 4.1 which could affect this approach.
Sorry I have not tested this approach with vSphere 4.1 yet.
Regards,
Eiad