As vSphere7 hit the road I decided to give a try to reuse my ten years old homelab hardware ... and it worked. Let's have a look to the installation.
From a learning perspective, you should not stop writing down your findings when using repurposed hardware. Do not use hardware with expired maintenance support or software with expired interoperability support in production. If you run into hardware or software related issues you are on your own.
In my definition of an IT homelab, I should be capable to explain it to 1) family members 2) to people interesting in backend IT but without practice and accreditation yet 3) to other IT pros 4) to path my way of becoming a business economist. This blog entry belongs to the category level 3.
Here's the homelab hardware list:
- DellEMCPoweredge T710: Bios 6.6.0, 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5645 @ 2.4 GHz, 48 GB Memory, Local SSD Samsung 840 and 850, Local SAS disk
- 8-Port Switch Cisco SG200-08
- Dell Vostro 1700 Laptop with Windows 10 1909 Home and with Internet Access
Having noticed the servers compatibility matrix for the Poweredge T710 modell, the hardware did had compatibility support until vSphere 6.5U3. The T710 has been capable to run the latest DellEMC ESXi 6.7 release so far.
As from the release notes, comparing the processors supported by vSphere 6.7, vSphere 7.0 no longer supports the following processors:
- Intel Family 6, Model = 2C (Westmere-EP)
- Intel Family 6, Model = 2F (Westmere-EX)
The processor ID of the T710 is shown as part of the servers compatibility matrix.
The CPUID Series Detail shows the CPUID Info 6.2C. Hence, the T710 Intel CPU 5645 is not supported for a vSphere 7.0 installation.
For all homelabs running on old hardware, vSphere offers a boot option called allowLegacyCPU=True. The blogger William Lam describes in its blog the option to allow to bypass the CPU check on ESXi7.0. This works for an Intel Xeon CPU 5645 as well.
Without the CPU bypass the installation stops with the following CPU_SUPPORT ERROR:
The option allowLegacyCPU=True still produces a warning, but allows to complete the installation. This is fine for the moment.
The unsupported devices warning correlates to the Perc H700 Adapter which isn't supported anymore.
For a nested lab and without the boot option, it is necessary to know the cpu make, model and features exposed to the virtual hardware of a vESXi7.0 VM.
The processor version information is returned from a CPUID register called eax. The value 0x000206c2 as part of the Processor ID is determinable, on a ESXi hypervisor using the cli utility smbiosDump.
In vSphere you can modify the cpuid of a virtual hardware. Let's think the Dell hardware better would be a T630 with an Intel Xeon E5-2620 processor. According to the release notes of vSphere 7, the CPUID Intel Family 6, Model = 2D (Sandy Bridge EP, GA 2012) still is supported. The CPUID would change1 from 0x000206x2 to 0x000206d7.
Specifying the cpuid of a virtual hardware by adding an entry cpuid.1.eax in its virtual machine .vmx file needs that the hex value is presented in binary form:
cpuid.1.eax = " 0010 0000 0110 1101 0111"
We must keep in mind that exposing a CPUID Intel Xeon E5-2620 to a guest os does not avoid the use of hardware functionalities of that specific CPUID only. By way of mitigation, as example, the avoidance of the instruction set AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions is a must, as the instruction set AVX / Advanced Vector Extensions isn't available on the Intel Xeon CPU 5645. It is especially a must if we would make use of Vmotion. To get an idea, have a look to blogger and VMware communities entries like here, here or here.
All in all, ESXi7.0 on an old Dell T710 hardware is up and running. A baremetal installation with ESXi6.7U3 can host a vESXi7.0 virtual machine.
And a baremetall installation with ESXi7.0 works as well.
The VMFS datastores of the local sata-attached ssd disks did not show up after the installation. It was necessary to remount them. I came across this when analyzing the vmfs volumes.
To remount the datastores type esxcfg-volume -M {UUID}
Now the vmfs snapshots are gone.
The first sight seems that the old DellEMC T710 hardware still can be useful for a nested vSphere homelab. So far the findings in comparison to vSphere 6.7U3 are
- The Intel Xeon CPU 5645 isn't supported anymore. There are some options to bypass the CPU check during installation to make run ESXi7.0.
- The Dell Perc H700 storage adapter isn't supported anymore.
- SSD disks on a sata controller with existing VMFS5 datastores from a ESXi6.7 installation had been remounted manually.
- There is a remarkable decrease in idle CPU usage and a slight decrease in idle memory.
- The UI shows up a information alert to check https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/55636 before running any VM.