To improve the compatibility of the Processors chipset during the VMotion for Virtualization, the recent release from VMware had the option of EVC for both INTEL and AMD which allow you to VMotion around all your VM even it is not running the same processor family. Previously you may faced compatible issues if you try to Vmotion from INTEL 7 series to 5 series processors family. With this new option, that problem will gone. Really thanks and appreciate to the effort from VMware as well as INTEL and AMD to bring this success and easier our life.

Here I would like to share my experience on how I get this enable without interrupt my existing production environment. By default, the features will tell you to power off all your VM before you can enable this features. Here is the tweak around solution you may want to try. Most of the time, we run critical application on VM which able to minimize the down time for us.

To have Enhanced VMotion Compatibility(EVC) working, 1st you need to create a new cluster. This cluster is not necessary to have HA/DRS running itself, because is to really allow you to move the existing production VM to the temp servers. At the same time, you can setup 1 or 2 temporally ESX Server with the evaluation edition, which have similiar configuration with your production ESX. This is to allow Vmotion happen between the ESX host.

Once you had those ready, start to VMotion all the VM out from the production ESX to the Newly build temporally ESX, until your existing production ESX cluster is empty with any of the VM power on and running.

Your cluster is now ready to configure for EVC. Right click your cluster and choose Edit Setting, and click on the VMware EVC. Select the option Enable EVC for Intel or AMD ( This will depend which processor you are using in your environment). Click Ok after that and the cluster will enable the EVC for you.

Once finish, you have EVC ready for your environment and say goodbye for processor incompatible on the Vmotion. Now you can vmotion back all the VM into this HA/DRS production cluster, and decommission your temp ESX servers you just built.

Please note that the 2 temporally ESX servers are not compatible for Vmotion before the EVC enable.