Workarounds for VCF 9.0

ESXi CPU Support / ESXi I/O Device Support / ESXi Hardware Support

Read William Lam’s blog to determine if your older hardware will still run newer versions of ESXi beginning with 8.0

NVMe Tiering with AMD Ryzen CPU workaround for VCF 9.0

See https://williamlam.com/2025/06/nvme-tiering-with-amd-ryzen-cpu-workaround-for-vcf-9-0.html#google_vignette

Add the following VM Advanced Setting to all VMs running on an AMD Ryzen system that has NVMe Tiering enabled

monitor_control.disable_apichv = "TRUE"

For individual VMs, applying this configuration after the initial deployment is not an issue but if you have automated workflows such as deploying VVF or VCF, you may run into further issues as you need to power off the VM to apply the workaround.

A more scalable way to roll out this change is to actually add the configuration to /etc/vmware/config as shown in the command below which will apply it globally for all VMs within an ESXi host, which is exactly what we want without needing to touch individual VMs or worry about when they are powered on, etc. This was a trick I had recalled almost a decade ago for rolling out other VM Advanced Settings, so glad we have this additional trick to make this more scalable.

echo 'monitor_control.disable_apichv ="TRUE"' >> /etc/vmware/config

Unlike applying the change directly to a VM, the global method takes effect immediately and now when you power on a VM, it will no longer be affected by this issue. This issue will be resolved in a future patch/update of VVF/VCF 9.0.

Configure NSX-T Edge to run on AMD Ryzen CPU

See https://williamlam.com/2020/05/configure-nsx-t-edge-to-run-on-amd-ryzen-cpu.html

PowerCLI remediation script for running NSX Edge on AMD Ryzen for VCF 9.0

See https://williamlam.com/2025/06/powercli-remediation-script-for-running-nsx-edge-on-amd-ryzen-for-vcf-9-0.html

Once your NSX Edge(s) have been deployed and power on, simply run the configure_nsx_edge_on_amd_ryzen.ps1 script (update it with your own environment credentials) as shown in screenshot below and you will see shortly that your NSX Edge now have the workaround applied without worrying about the timing of when you manually type the commands.

Disable 10GbE NIC Pre-Check in the VCF 9.0 Installer

See https://williamlam.com/2025/06/disable-10gbe-nic-pre-check-in-the-vcf-9-0-installer.html

By default, the new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 Installer will validate the ESXi management interface is at a 10GbE network adaptor and it will prevent users from proceeding if the minimum link speed is not detected.

Step 1 - After successfully deploying the VCF Installer appliance, you will need to SSH to the system using the vcf username and the password that you had specified during the deployment. Step 2 - Switch to the root user by running the following command: su - Step 3 - Append enable.speed.of.physical.nics.validation=false to /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application.properties configuration file Step 4 - Restart the VCF Installer services for the change to go into effect: echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh Step 5 - Re-run the pre-check and you will find the 10GbE NIC pre-check is no longer performed

VCF 9.0 Installer workaround for ESXi hosts with different vendor

See https://williamlam.com/2025/06/vcf-9-0-installer-workaround-for-esxi-hosts-with-different-vendor.html