Errors are encountered when attempting to enable Skylake EVC mode or any other mode higher than Sandybridge in a cluster containing Servers with Intel Ice Lake CPUs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Errors are encountered when attempting to enable one of the following EVC modes in a cluster containing Servers with Intel Ice Lake CPUs:
  • Intel "Ivy Bridge" Generation
  • Intel "Haswell" Generation
  • Intel "Broadwell" Generation
  • Intel "Skylake" Generation
• Error Message: The host's CPU hardware does not support the cluster's current Enhanced vMotion Compatibility mode. The host CPU lacks features required by that mode:
  • XSAVE of BND0-BDN3 bounds registers (BNDREGS) is unsupported
  • XSAVE of BNDCFGU and BNDSTATUS registers (BNDCSR) is unsupported
  • Host is of type: vendor intel family 0X6 model 0x6a
• You may see similar log entries as below in the vpxd logs (/var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd-xxx.log):

info vpxd[06890] [Originator@6876 sub=MoHost opID=ku3r3o5u-271960-auto-5tuh-h5:70024211-37] Running EVC test on with evcMode intel-skylake

info vpxd[06890] [Originator@6876 sub=MoTransEVCMgr opID=ku3r3o5u-271960-auto-5tuh-h5:70024211-37] EVCAdmissionFailed: the CPU family/model doesn't support this mode.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

VMware Engineering has identified an issue in the Skylake EVC mode, which affects vSphere 6.7 up until Update 3o.

Resolution

This issue had been fixed with ESXi 6.7 Update 3p (VMware ESXi 6.7, Patch Release ESXi670-202111001).
Please update ESXi to this or a newer version to apply the fix.

Additional Information

Please refer to Build numbers and versions of VMware vCenter Server (2143838) and Build numbers and versions of VMware ESXi/ESX (2143832) for specific build numbers.