enabling AES in BIOS on DL380p for VMWare vMotion

[Andrew Zenz]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to enable AES instructions so I can use vMotion in my vMware installation.

I have upgraded the BIOS to 18/9/2013 and have looked through every setting but can't seem to find it.

Can anyone enlighten me?

Thanks

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

Take a look at these two articles:

c03294444 and c03291696.

BIOS Version:2012.02.21 (29 Mar 2012)

Enabled Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instructions. AES was disabled with the 12/21/2011 System ROM revision. Applications written to take advantage of AES will either run slower than if AES was enabled or such applications may fail to run. Hypervisor-based workload migration tools (such as VMware's VMotion Live Migration) may not be able to migrate workloads from systems that have AES disabled (with the 12/21/2011 System ROM) to systems that have AES enabled (with all later revisions of the System ROM). It is recommended that customers using hypervisor-based workload migration tools update their systems to this revision of the System ROM or later.

By the statement "Enabled Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instructions" what I am 'guessing' is that AES is enabled where in the older BIOS version it was disabled.  So its enabled by default and there is no option in the BIOS to manually disable to enable AES.

Take a look at these articles from VMware for processor compatibility.

VMotion CPU Compatibility Requirements for AMD Processors (1992)
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1992

vMotion CPU compatibility requirements for Intel processors (1991)
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1991

Thank You!
I am a HP employee
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[Andrew Zenz]

Thanks Suman_1978, I have already checked out those articles (or ones similar to them) and came to the same conclusion - that AES is enabled by default and that there is no option to enable/disable it.

To be complete, I suppose I should have posted more information about what I was attempting.

vMotion from an HP DL380G6 (L5520@2.27Ghz CPUs) to an HP DL380p G8 (E5-2609@2.4Ghz CPUs)

The error received is:

The virtual machine requires hardware features that are unsupported or disabled on the target host:
* Carryless multiply (PCLMULQDQ) (see KB 1034926)
* AES instructions (AES-NI) (see KB 1034926)

If possible, use a cluster with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled; see KB article 1003212.

CPUID details: incompatibility at level 0x1 register 'ecx'.
Host bits: 0000:0010:1001:1000:0010:0010:0000:0011
Required:  x000:x00x:10x1:1xx0:xx10:xx1x:xx0x:xx01

I am guessing now that there is a CPU incompatability which is really going to tick me off - it's a long story.

I guess too, that I will start a thread at vMware to see if anyone there can shed any light on this for me.

Cheers, 

[Andrew Zenz]

Suman_1978, in addition I have found this vMware article which describes my issue:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1034926

but doesn't really provide a solution except to contact server manufacturer.

Cheers again.

[Suman_1978]

Hi,

Check out these documents from HP, you will get some work around.

c02750394 and c02728875

Thank You!
I am a HP employee.

[Micheeel · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I had exactly the same problem with my new DL380 G8 servers and my olders DL380G6, i cannot vmotion vm because of CPU incompatiblity problem.

To make it works, i had to enable EVC compatibilty mode in Clusters parameters and mode configured to "Intel Nehalem mode".

Then all my VM was able to be migrated to the new DL380gen8 host.

Hope it will help you.

[Andrew Zenz]

Many thanks for the reply.

I neglected to post a response to previous message, but I did end up creating a cluster and using vMotion successfully that way.

Thanks again.