Cannot see multiple cores on e5620; networking problem

[psychollek]

My hw setup is :

Actina solar server with two xeon e5620 processors (4 cores + hyper threading), dual nic and adaptec raid on the supermicro X8DT6 mainboard.

First problem: esxi reports 2 processors one core each without hyperthreading.

Second problem : I can't manage to establish networking on my vm's - I tried few configurations:

a) one nic connected to one virtualswitch with one vm group and one vmkernel port.

b) two nics connected to one virtualswitch with two vm groups and one vmkernel port (with and without vlans).

c) one nic connected to to one virtualswitch with one vm group and second nic connected to second virtualswitch with one vmkernel port.

on every of those configuration esxi host have acces to network and I can't get dhcp for my vm's .

nics are connected to cisco slm 2024 switch on standard settings (dhcp server connected to the same switch).

Any help or insight welcome.

[Linjo]

Installed latest bios and enabled VT in bios?

Any VLAN:s configured on the cisco switch?

Best regards,

Linjo

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[psychollek]

no vlans no switch, virtualization enabled in bios (or esxi wouldn't install afaik), if bios is most recent - it depends on if there was an update to it - i can try searching for it, but the network problem is more urgent now.

version of the esxi : 4.0.0 build 244038

[kjb007]

If ESXi is working, and your vm's are not going through the same NIC, I'd check to see if port security is enabled on your physical switch.

As far as the CPU goes, are there messages, or were there messages on the console when you boot up? Are there entries in your ESXi logs?

-KjB

[psychollek]

I got out of work for today so I can't check anything now, but :

I had no problem with bridged connections with virtualbox on the same switch (and the same server) or connecting multiple computers to another switch connected to this one, so I doubt it is port security (and I was not able to get into my switch today so I only called my admin and he told me that switch has default settings and he don't think that port security is enabled by default). Is there any particural setting that should not be set ? as I understand I shall treat virtualswitches as normal layer2 switches.

[psychollek]

the network problem was actually on the other side - the dhcp server was not working properly (found this out this morning - as yesterday all worked on previously aquired leases ;] ) so I'm down to multiple cores problem :/

[kjb007]

The processor itself seems to be supported. Have you checked the BIOS to make sure the cores are all enabled?

-KjB

[psychollek]

yes I did and all of them where fully operational when I installed gentoo on the machine. Aditionally - when I installed VMware server on the said system - it have seen 1 processor 8 cores.

I found out that you actually can get into a (more or less) linux shell underneath the esxi - I'll try that out tomorrow and try to get the cat /proc/cpuinfo out of it (when I run linux on the machine it finds processors 0-15 which is expected due to the hyperthreading).

[psychollek]

I have updated the bios today, set all the bios options again (even rebilded array due to 2TB limit of esxi :/ - but it's unrelated) and I still see only one core per processor and no hyperthreading :/ (even though processors are properly recognised as two e5620 in the console)

I didn't have the time to get into sh of the esxi to check /proc/cpuinfo

[sohail003]

Calling all Gurus!!!!!

Please can someone let me know that is Xeon E5620 is compatibale wit Vmware ESX? Waiting for the answer

I have got ML330 G6 server I am planing to buy E5620 processor.

Cheers

[a_p_]

To answer your question, yes this should work if the system supports this upgrade. Search for ML330 on the official HCL at http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

Please don't hijack old threads to ask questions in the future. You are welcome to create new threads.

André

[psychollek]

I'm sorry, I forgot to update the topic.

Bios update and some bios settings from my manufacturer did the trick and now everything works flawlesly.