I have a question about enabling EVC without downtime with the help of Linked Mode.
Scenario : I installed the new vCenter 5 and my colleague disconnected the host from vCenter4 and attached to the new vCenter 5 But when the host was disconnected and reconnected to the new VC it said that the cluster cannot have EVC enabled as you cannot have any powered on vm’s on the host when its joining the cluster So he decided we dont need EVC for now we can look at it when we upgrade the hosts hence the cluster was created without EVC.
Now the first host is upgraded to ESXi5. We created a new cluster with EVC enabled… so we have new vSphere5 VC with 2 clusters… one with EVC and one without EVC. We cannot VMotion powerd-on VM’s between the 2 clusters as it comes up with an error about CPU incompatibilities (Screenshot Attached)
A work around I thought of was to just add the VM to the inventory on the new upgraded server on the EVC enabled cluster I can add the VM as long as it is powerd off…. If its powered on I have to add it with a different name as its on the same VC.
Linked mode seems to be last option…. But I haven't ever used it before….
Hence the Question if I go through the entire process of creating another VC 5 adding upgraded host to that and run the existing VC and new VC in linked mode… can I still add the VM’s via add to inventory with the same name without powering it off… If I can what will be the impact on the VM itself… which is running at 2 different places ??
Thank you