RameshRajan wrote:
I have a Dell T5400 with Intel Xeon X5450 Processor. As per all the research i did this processor has Intel VT-x capabilities but does not have VT-x/EPT.
I tried all the workarounds around given by jmattson and others but was only able to avoid the error message but cannot achieve the functionality of nested 64-bit vms and fault tolerance capability.
Though you cannot run nested 64-bit VMs on this processor, you should be able to run 32-bit fault tolerance using binary translation.
I run Ubuntu Server and then have vmware player to run 2 ESxi 5 hosts for my home lab. Due to the non-availability of VT-x/EPT in certain(most of the) Intel Xeon processors you cannot virtualize a fully functional hypervisor (like ESXi, Xen etc). At the best what you lose is
1) vMotion
2) Fault Tolerance
3) Ability to import vmware marketplace OVF appliances because they have require a compiant ESXi.
Many Xeon processors do support EPT. The CPU needs to be based on the Nehalem architecture or later. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeon#Nehalem-based_Xeon.
I cannot speak to point (3), but even without virtualized VT-x/EPT, you should be able to take advantage of vMotion, and you can use fault tolerance with binary translation. See http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2011/07/how-to-enable-nested-vft-virtual-fault.html for some good instructions.