Virtual Machine with hardware version 17 and above running on Skylake Hosts reports minimum EVC requirement as Cascade Lake even with Cluster/Per-VM EVC disabled

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Virtual Machine (VM) Hardware version is 17 or above
• VM is registered on ESXi host with maximum supported EVC mode as Skylake
• Enabling Skylake EVC mode on the cluster, fails with error : The target host does not support the virtual machine's current hardware requirements. XGETBV with ECX =1 is unsupported.
• vpxd.log:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS info vpxd[60698] [Originator@6876 sub=VmCheck opID=l7j2hn0k-205319-auto-4efc-h5:70052894-63] CompatCheck results: (vim.vm.check.Result) [
(vim.vm.check.Result) {
   vm = 'vim.VirtualMachine:638fa8f6-6928-4b36-b948-69d773f70842:vm-4012',
   host = 'vim.HostSystem:638fa8f6-6928-4b36-b948-69d773f70842:host-1015',
   error = (vmodl.MethodFault) [
      (vim.fault.FeatureRequirementsNotMet) {
         faultMessage = (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) [
            (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) {
               key = "com.vmware.vim.vmfeature.cpuid.xgetbv_ecx1",
            },
            (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) {
               key = "com.vmware.vim.vpxd.vmcheck.featureRequirementsNotMet.useClusterOrPerVmEvc",
            }
         ],
         featureRequirement = (vim.vm.FeatureRequirement) [
            (vim.vm.FeatureRequirement) {
               key = "cpuid.xgetbv_ecx1",
               featureName = "cpuid.xgetbv_ecx1",
               value = "Bool:Min:1"
 

Note: Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.0

Cause

The Skylake EVC mode does not include support for XGETBV_ECX1 and was introduced for VMs using hardware version 17 and above. Powering on such a VM on a Skylake host will prevent the host from being added to a Skylake EVC cluster.

Resolution

To enable Skylake EVC Mode on an existing cluster of Skylake Hosts:

• Power off VMs with hardware version 17 and above
• Enable Skylake EVC Mode on the cluster

OR

Downgrade the Virtual Hardware version to 16 or lower for the impacted VMs using the steps mentioned Downgrading the virtual machine hardware version in ESXi

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
Enabling Skylake EVC mode on the VM/Cluster with Skylake hosts that have VMs on hardware version 17 requires downtime on the VMs