I have been racking my head the last few days trying to create a nested ESXi host running on Hardware level 9 and 5.1. My base cluster is running EVC for Merom. I can setup a nested ESXi with 5 and 5.1 as long as I leave my hardware level at 8. If I try using 9 and check off the box to pass hardware onto my VM, starting the VM gives me the following message:
To resolve CPU incompatibilities, use a cluster with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled. See KB article 1003212.
Virtualized Hardware Virtualization support is unavailable. This may be because Intel VT-x/AMD-V is disabled in the BIOS.
When running through Hardware Level 8 I don't get this message and my nested environments work as long as I have the following in the VMX file:
monitor.virtual_exec = "hardware"
vhv.enable = "true"
vhv.allow = "true"
cpuid.1.ecx = "00000000000000001010001000111001"
guestOS = "rhel6-64"
monitor.virtual_mmu = "hardware"
monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = "true"
Upgrading a working 5.1 environment fro HW 8 to 9 results in it breaking. Does anyone have any ideas? I have consulted all the known resources on the web.
So anything can happen, and it's probably a bug!
v9 VMs were suppose to make Nested ESXi easier (but unsupported!), but in my experience, the old ways are better, and use v8 and VMX mods!
ESXi 5.1 is a different beast to ESXi 5.0. So what worked with ESXi 5.0, may not work with ESXi 5.1, because the Intel-VT checking is more "severe".