Hello,
We have a 3 host VMware cluster (vCenter 6.0 and hosts running ESXi 6.0). The cluster has EVC enabled so we can migrate between the hosts and we use DRS/HA. The VMs running are mostly Windows 2008 R2 - Windows 2016 with a couple Linux machines. We run standard Microsoft services like AD, Exchange, SQL, etc.
The current EVC mode is Intel Merom Generation and this has not been changed since, but we have since gone through a few host refresh cycles.
If I click on the EVC it lets me increase it all the way up to Intel Haswell Generation EVC.
The 3 hosts are running:
- Intel Xeon Gold 6134
- Intel Xeon E5-2667 v4
- Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3
We have never done this previously and we don't have a lab where we can test this so I am trying to get some reaffirmation on what will happen when i go ahead and do this.
I did quite a bit of research and my understand is that running VMs will not recognize the new feature bits until they are powered off and then powered back on again. Is this correct? Is there a way to check what CPU feature bits the OS sees before/after? Will a utility like CPU-Z show this?
Has anyone run into issues when they raise the EVC in terms of stability? Is there anything I should be aware of?
Lastly, if we enable EVC but don't shutdown and startup our VMs - will we still be able to migrate these VMs between hosts? I plan to raise the EVC but I won't be able to power cycle all the VMs right away - so I want to make sure I won't loose migration capabilities for those VMs?
Any big gains to be had going from Intel Merom to Intel Haswell - seems like quite a technology jump to go from one to the other...?
Just concerned with things I cannot test and verify in a lab - appreciate any feedback anyone can provide that has gone through this exercise.
Thanks