You can add, modify, or delete the host profile.

You can create a host profile with specific set of BIOS settings, firmware version, PCI devices, and PCI groups. When you create a host and select a specific host profile for a domain, VMware Telco Cloud Automation applies the configurations of the specified host profile to all the hosts within that domain.
Note:

Prerequisites

  • Ensure that you have details of BIOS keys and values.
  • Ensure that you have details of the firmware.

Procedure

  1. Click the Configuration tab.
  2. Click Host Profile.
  3. To add a new host profile, click Add .
    Note: To create a new host profile using the configuration file of other host profile, click Load Configuration and select the required JSON file.
  4. Add the profile name in the Profile Name field.
  5. In the BIOS Settings Field, to add values click Add Attributes.
    • Add the BIOS key in the Key field.
    • Add the corresponding value of the BIOS key in the Value field.
  6. In the Advance System Settings Field, to add key value pairs click Add Attributes.

    • Add the ESXi key attribute in the Key field.

    • Add the corresponding value of the advanced settings key in the Value field.

    Note:

    For few specific attributes, you might need to restart ESXi so that the changes are reflected after applying the configuration through HCP workflow.

  7. In Firmwares, to add values, click Add Firmware.
    • Add the firmware name in the Name field.
    • Add the identity of the firmware, that the vendor provides, in the Software field.
    • Add the version of the firmware to which you want to upgrade the current firmware in the Version field.
    • Add the location of the firmware upgrade file in the Location field.
      Note: Ensure that you provide a valid URL. The URL must start with HTTP and end with extensions .XML or .EXE.
    • Add the value of checksum of the firmware upgrade file in the Checksum field.
  8. To configure CPU Power Management, click Add Attributes and then select Type from the dropdown.
    Note: For FlexRAN workloads on Sapphire Rapid servers, Broadcom recommends users to configure CPU Frequency to Intel recommended value using Host Profile functionality.
    • CPU Power Management Policy enables effective use of the power resources for CPU, such as High Performance, Balanced, Low power, and Custom.
    • CPU Frequency(in GHz) enables configuration of CPU Frequency using Host Profile.
      • Enter the desired CPU Frequency under Value. CPU Frequency can be provided upto only 1 decimal point.
        Note: The feature to configure CPU Frequency in Host Profile is supported from TCA 3.1.1 release onwards.
  9. In the PCI Device Settings, to add values click Add Device.
    • To add a PCI device action, click Add Action.

    • Select the value from the drop-down menu. You can select SR-IOV for SRIOV based devices, PassThrough for PassThrough devices, or Custom for Accelerator devices.

      • For the SRIOV device, configure the value of Number of Virtual Functions.

      • For PassThrough device, configure the value of Enable Passthrough

        Note:

        A total of 128 SRIOV networking adapters and PCI devices can be configured for a CSAR.

      • For Custom (Accelerator) devices, provide the configuration file required for accelerator in Configuration File field.

      In the PCI Device section, the only supported device type for a CUSTOM PCI Device is Accelerator (going forward, acc100 is referred as Accelerator). For existing hostconfig profiles configured in prior releases, the displayed device type will still be shown as acc100.

      A new field, called FFT Binary File, is added to support customizing the FFT Binary for an vRan Boost accelerator device. You can click the BROWSE button and select a local file.

    Note:

    The FFT Binary File is only supported for vRan Boost accelerator devices. If it is applied it to an ACC100 device, an error is encountered.

    • To add a filter for PCI devices, click Add Filter. Provide the values of Key and Value field.
  10. In the PCI Device Groups, to create a device group, click Add Group.
    1. Add the group name in the Device Group Name.
    2. To add a filter for the device group, click Add Filter and enter the key and value in the Key and Value field. You can select the value from the drop-down list.
      • NUMA ID
      • Device ID
      • Vendor ID
      • Alias
        Note: Alias is the name assigned by ESXi for a PCI Device. The input must be a regex pattern that matches with the target PCI device. For example, if the input value is ^vmnic1$, then only vmnic1 is considered. Do not use this filter if the target PCI device is operating in Passthrough Mode as the alias value is unavailable.
      • Index
  11. In the ESXi Reservation, to add ESXi details.
    • Reserved cores per NUMA node - Number of cores reserved for ESXi process. For ESXi version 7.0U2 and above, the default value is 1. For other ESXi versions, the default value is 2.
    • Reserved Memory per NUMA node - Memory reserved for ESXi process. The default value is 512 MB.
    • (Optional)

      Min. cores for CPU reservation per NUMA node - Number of physical core reserved for each NUMA node. If you do not configure this parameter, the value of Reserved cores per NUMA node is applied. The default value is 3.

What to do next

Edit, Clone, and Export a Host Profile.