For virtual machines with disproportionately large memory consumption, you can use advanced options to override the default virtual CPU settings.

You can add these advanced options to the virtual machine configuration file.

Table 1. Advanced Options for Virtual NUMA Controls
Option Description Default Value
cpuid.coresPerSocket
Determines the number of virtual cores per virtual CPU socket. This option does not affect the virtual NUMA topology unless numa.vcpu.followcorespersocket is configured.
Note: ESXi 8.0 automatically selects optimal coresPerSocket for a VM, the default value is displayed as 0.

1

numa.vcpu.maxPerVirtualNode

Determines the number of virtual NUMA nodes by splitting the total vCPU count evenly with this value as its divisor.

8

numa.autosize.once

When you create a virtual machine template with these settings, the settings remain the same every time you then power on the virtual machine with the default value TRUE. If the value is set to FALSE, the virtual NUMA topology is updated every time it is powered on. The virtual NUMA topology is reevaluated when the configured number of virtual CPUs on the virtual machine is modified at any time.

FALSE

numa.vcpu.min

The minimum number of virtual CPUs in a virtual machine that are required to generate a virtual NUMA topology. A virtual machine is always UMA when its size is smaller than numa.vcpu.min

9

numa.vcpu.followcorespersocket

If set to 1, reverts to the old behavior of virtual NUMA node sizing being tied to cpuid.coresPerSocket.

0

numa.allowHotadd In order to activate the capability of hot-adding CPU to a new NUMA node, add numa.allowHotadd under advanced configuration options. Then you can manually add a NUMA configuration while CPU hotadd is activated. FALSE
numa.vcpu.coresPerNode

VMX parameter to configure size of virtual NUMA node, which is interpreted from the UI reconfiguration. This parameter is only effective for HWv20. Defaults to 0, which indicates ESXi automatically selects vNUMA size.

Note: If this option conflicts with numa.vcpu.maxPerVirtualNode, the VM cannot power on.
0
vcpu.hotadd When this option is TRUE, virtual NUMA is deactivated. The VM always sees one virtual NUMA node when VM is capable of CPU hotplug.
llc.multiLLCPerSocket

VM exposes truthful vLLC on AMD Epyc when this option is TRUE. The exposed vLLC size can be different than virtual socket size.

FALSE
llc.size.vcpu Manually configured number of vcpus for vLLC on AMD Epyc. The value is ignored if it is incompatible with other settings of the VM.
chipset.motherboardLayout

Type of virtual motherboard used by this VM. It can only have one of the following two values:

acpi: New motherboard layout starting from HWv 20.

i440bx: Legacy motherboard layout

cpuid.coresPerSocket.cookie

This is a vmx entry generated by ESXi to store the automatically generated coresPerSocket value. It is there to ensure vMotion consistency. Do not change or remove it manually.