Hi everyone,
I have a support ticket opened with support but I'd like to get additional feedback as I'm still not sure I understand the process fully. So I figure the more information I can gather the better.
Current Environment:
- Running ESX 5.5 u2.
- vCenter Appliance 5.5u2
- Have a cluster with HA/DRS enabled by NOT EVC
- The cluster contains three identical servers. Intel Xeon X5690
Goal:
- Add a new server to the cluster and enable EVC without downtime. The new server is Intel Xeon E5-2600-v4. This server has not been built yet.
Here's where I get lost:
It's my understanding that we need to enable EVC if we want to add this host in the cluster to participate in vmotion, etc. So my thoughts on how it would shake out is as follows:
a) Enable EVC on the existing cluster which based on this I can set it to a compatibility level of Westmere?
b) Build the new server and configure SAN, etc. It appears that the server needs 5.5u3 instead of u2 from the hardware compatibility matrix:
- Can I integrate this into an environment that has 5.5u2 and upgrade the other hosts to u3 later on or do the existing hosts need to be on u3 before I introduce the new server?
- Does vCenter need an upgrade?
c) Add the new host and add it to the existing cluster (which has been configured for EVC). The new host will take on the feature set of the Westmere cluster
- I realize that there are certain feature sets of the newer CPU that will not be available, but since we are not using them now, I assume that shouldn't be an issue
- Will the new server still be able to provide the additional CPU processing power?
d) Done
So that's how I see things going down. But I'm being told that I may need to create a new cluster, power down each VM, move it to the new cluster, and power it on.
Anyone have any advice that they can share?
Thank you!