ESXi

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  • 1.  ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores

    Posted Jun 15, 2012 04:44 AM

    Howdy all,

    I've been trying to sort this problem for about a month now, even bought a replacement CPU as I was concerned I had too old 'failing' Core2 Duos.

    Anyway; I had a working ESX installation that I am sure was upgraded to 5 (until I made a silly mistake with a rm command and the home folder of a hypervisor - I was looking into the driver files, curiosity etc.). I'm now questioning my own sanity along with the idea I had upgraded it beyond 4.1, I was sure.. but I digress again. I've tried re-installing previously having installed a larger harddrive and installed ESX on it then 'moved' my VM to the host datastore. However everytime I attempt to install ESX it does not recognise more than a single core.. It's driving me nuts! In the vSphere Client Inventory Summary I have "Processor Sockets: 1" and "Core per Socket: 1"... I'm going to be trying another motherboard this weekend along with a harddrive from a working ESX install.. However I'd rather not have to purchase new parts/server this time until I am sure that my current ones are faulty.

    Any advice offered getting my setup running again would be gratefully received..

    Thanks in advance,

    4lan



  • 2.  RE: ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores

    Posted Jun 18, 2012 12:57 PM

    I'm running a Q6600 on a Dell XPS 410 with ESXi 5 Update 1 will all four cores showing up correctly. What motherboard/bios are you running?



  • 3.  RE: ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores

    Posted Jun 18, 2012 01:02 PM

    Hi,

    Thanks for your reply.

    The motherboard is an Asus P5Q-E latest BIOS, 2101 I believe.

    Cheers,

    4lan



  • 4.  RE: ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores
    Best Answer

    Posted Jun 18, 2012 01:10 PM

    Couple of things to try.

    • Resetting the BIOS to factory defaults and re-apply date/time and boot preferences.
    • Try a clean install of ESXi 5 update 1 on a different drive and see if everything shows up cleanly
    • Try rolling the bios back to 2001 or 1901.


  • 5.  RE: ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores

    Posted Jun 20, 2012 08:30 AM

    Hi there,

    Many thanks for your suggestions.

    I had already tried your second suggestion and unfortunately it was a non fix. However I did succeed with your first suggestion which is great news! All that remains is to re-attach my datastore and import my VMs.

    Curious, I would love to know what setting in the BIOS caused the problem.. but not that curious ;¬D

    Many thanks for your help!

    Regards,

    4lan

    Message was edited by: 4lan - spelling.



  • 6.  RE: ESXi 5 not recognising Intel Q6600 cpu with 4 cores

    Posted Jun 20, 2012 02:09 PM

    There are BIOS settings available on most systems to disable extra CPU cores. The need for disabling cores outside of a faulty core (which would be an interesting fix) would be for backwards compatibility for software which doesn't know how to handle multiple cores or to keep licensing valid on software that is running under a per core licensing model.