ESX 4 COS - 64bit only?

[atbnet]

The new COS in ESX 4 is 64bit, however is this 64bit only and will only run on 64bit hardware? Or will ESX4 also run on a server that has 32bit processors?

Its not a problem for the ESX servers at work when I see the HCL im sure they will be supported as theyre very new Dell PE2950s, im just thinking about my test lab at home which is an older HP DL380.

Andy, VMware Certified Professional / VMware vExpert Award 2009

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[NWhiley]

How old is the 380?

[TomHowarth · Accepted solution]

NO ESX4 and ESXi 4 are 64bit only

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

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[weinstein5]

As Tom said 64 bit only -

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[Troy_Clavell]

a 64bit kernel will be nice and VMware put it out there because of competition as well as requests from customers.

[Steve_Tron]

Hi,

If you DL380 is a G5 then it should be fine if its a G4 then I think your out of luck.

Regards

[depping]

Troy, what's the advantage of having a 64bit COS? As far as I understood it does or helps little to none in terms of performance etc...

Duncan

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[TomHowarth]

The use of the 64 bit Kernel has allowed the increases in host memory and guest maximums. (alledgely)

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "[VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment|http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780136083214]”. Currently available on roughcuts

[Troy_Clavell]

Troy, what's the advantage of having a 64bit COS? As far as I understood it does or helps little to none in terms of performance etc...

It's a nice to have and that is it, but to me, just like i'm sure you feel, there is no "advantage". I think VMware got a lot of push from competition and customers to present a 64bit kernel\hypervisor, so they did.

[bitsorbytes]

If you look at the reviews and recommendations from vmware, the 'newer' hardware performs a lot better than the older hardware.... So the move to 64bit is mostly for extra addressable RAM with a sideline advantage it ensures that customers are on newer hardware which performs a lot better when running VM's on it.

Lets be upfront and real here, if your hardware is 32bit only, then its old and shouldn't be running ESX on it or your using it on desktop consumer hardware, which once again isn't production ready or on the HCL.

Andrew

[Phil_White]

So let me get this straight.

VMWare releases their new VI/ESX and it will NOT run on existing 32-bit platforms. Wow, what a waste of $40k of money! Wasn't VMWare supposed to save us money on server hardware

[glynnd1]

How old is your $40k of hardware?

[bitsorbytes]

, your statement is correct. Now for the record can you please provide what hardware you have is still 32bit ONLY that use to be on the esx 3.5 HCL and now won't be on esx4 HCL?

[Phil_White]

My apologies and a large foot in my mouth! It appears our aging and archaic 7150N processors DO have a 64-bit instruction set.

http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=28029&processor=7150N&spec-codes=SL9YR

Shame on me for assuming that processor did not have 64-bit capability.

[mudha]

yes it is also 70xx series Tulsa and Paxville MP supports Intel VT only older intel platform like Potomac, Nocoona, Irvindeliye, Cranford does not support VT.

It is not good to have these procs with ESX 4.0 as it is ESX 4.0 is 64 bit OS

[atbnet]

Its a DL380 G3 (meant to put the generation on but missed it out).

Now ESX 4 and the docs are out I can see its 64bit only now. Its a test home lab so just means I need a 64bit server at home for testing.

Shame all the old servers at work after P2V are also 32bit cpus!

If anyone would like to donate a 64bit server to VMADMIN.CO.UK I could arrange advertising space for you on the website

Andy, VMware Certified Professional / VMware vExpert Award 2009

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[rmrobert]

Yeah, you have to try pretty hard to find a 32 bit only processor, especially in the server side. The only common systems that are 32bit only now are netbooks. As for everyone's questions about why move to 64bit, the benefits are to address more memory, give greater performance when running 64 bit VMs, etc. 64 bit mode also gives access to more CPU registers, so in general performance is somewhat improved.

As for why we didn't continue to maintain 32 bit support, that is because doing so would require some significant effort and double a lot of the testing required. We made the call that our effort was better spent making ESX 4.0 work as well as possible on the hardware that nearly all existing servers have, and all new servers will have.

For those of you with 32 bit processors, realize that ESX3.5 is still supported and will continue to work as well as it has been working for you.

[bkhowson]

>> Troy, what's the

advantage of having a 64bit COS? As far as I understood it does or

helps little to none in terms of performance etc...

The real limitation of running ESX on 32bit only hardware is that the esx hypervisor itself is native 64bit. However, for the COS, as a linux guest, using the 64bit kernel means that it benefits from paravirtualization (VMI) support, and therefore incurs less overhead.

Brian Howson

[rmrobert]

Well nice guess, but the COS isn't a VM in any traditional sense, and certainly doesn't use any VMI support. Also I think VMI was only ever used for 32 bits guests.

But yes, a 64 bit COS just makes sense now that ESX is a 64 bit platform. To do otherwise would be somewhat silly.

[VinkenB]

I use two 3 year old DL585 servers with 64 GB memory and 4 Opteron 880 dual-core processors.

These processors supports 64-bit and ESX 4 will run perfectly on it.

But the DL585 is not on the ESX 4 HCL.

I know that Opteron 880 lacks AMD-V support and as far as I know this means that only FT will not

run on these systems.

But is this a good reason to not put this system on the ESX 4 hcl ?

A little footnote in the hcl should be sufficient to let me know that FT is not supported on some systems.

So why does VMware not support all the 64-bit capable systems that are on the ESX 3.5 hcl ?

I've already heard the argument that ESX 3.5 is still supported.

But I only want to maintain a single version of ESX.