Hi all
We currently have a DRS cluster with 6 Dell Poweredge R610 hosts with either Intel Xeon 5540 or 5530 CPUs which according to this KB article (http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1991) are in the Group D for vMotion compatibility. (Nehalem-EP)
I want to add new hosts to the cluster and am looking at newer Dell R620s. These have Xeon E5-2640 CPUs .I can't find a kb article with the same detail for the new CPUs. The Vmware Compatibility guide tells me that this is a Sandy-bridge processor?
If I add the hosts with the newer CPUs to the cluster, will they just work? Or will I need to turn on some sort of EVC mode?
If I read this kb article (VMware KB: Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) processor support ) it suggests that I would need to turn on EVC Level2 (Nehalem). This would 'turn off' CPU features in the new hosts over and above what the older CPUs have... But what happens in 'x' years time when all older hosts are gone - presumbaly I can then turn off the EVC compatibility mode so that all CPU features are presented? Would this have any adverse effect on existing VMs ?
Please could someone sanity-check me and/or point me in the direction of something to reassure me?
Thanks in advance
NB. Currently on vSphere 4.0 but upgrading to 5/5.1 soon.