Xeon E5430 supported?

[Karlitosway]

Hi folks, i have some IBM blades HS21XM

32Gigs

Dual Xeon E5430 CPU.

Vsphere4.1 runs in a smooth production cluster with EVC set at Xeon 45nm Core2, Vmotions going good with freshly added XS22 blades all same ESX Version.

We have License upgrade to ESXi5 BUT, looks like XeonE5430 is not on compatibilty list from IBM.

Vmware says its list comes from vendor official reports.

Asked IBM reps if anyone had really tested ESXi5 on HS21XM or if they want just to drop support for "older" hardware platforms.

No response.

HP and Dell have certified this combination on their older E5430 CPU models.

Does anyone had tested this particular HW/Hypervisor combination?

Many thanks

Carlo

[golddiggie]

It's not the processor that's the issue, it's the blade configuration that's the issue. I'm runing my host (with ESXi 5 installed) with a pair of E5405 Xeon's without issue. You need to ensure the actual blade (and possibly chassis too) is on the HCL/compatible with ESXi 5. From what I could find on the VMware HCL, the family of blades you're using only went up to ESX/ESXi 4.1 u2.

BTW, not terribly surprised by the lack of help from IBM here.

[kinder83]

There is an other discussion about it. I don't know if you have any update about this issue.

I'm in the same situation. Ready to migrate to vsphere 5.1 when I discovered that hs21 in not supported from VMWare. The difference is that my processor is E5450.

The problem I think is not technically, I quite sure that if I install esxi 5 on blade hs21 I will have no problems. Someone has just tried it.

But the problem is about support and warranty.  For example, if in the future you will have a problem, could you open a ticket in IBM or open a ticket in VMWare?

Unfortunatly I think that the first answer from the support will be: "Have you a hs21 with esxi 5? Yes? I'm sorry is not supported!". Same thing with other vendor like VMware or for example, in my case, with Symantec for the backup.