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Frequently asked scenarios about vCenter Cloud Gateway (VCGW) for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+

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This is a multi-part blog series on some of the frequently asked questions and scenarios for the vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ Cloud Services. What started out as a single blog post that attempted to summarize some of the learnings and notes that I have made while answering various questions from our field and customers for vSphere+, vSAN+ and VCF+ quickly turned into a 3K+ word blog post and counting! 😅

While I thought it would be easier from a search perspective to have everything in a single blog post, I decided to take the advice from the community and actually break it up into small blogs which would be part of a large multi-part blog series, in no particular order but I recommend reading it in the following logical order as shown below:

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Retrieving and translating CPUID features for a vSphere VM

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Whether you are using the classic Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) on a vSphere Cluster or the new Per-VM EVC capability, the usable (user-level) CPU features from an ESXi host are then presented down into a Virtual Machine for consumption.

If you wanted to see what which CPU features are exposed for a particular VM or even custom CPU compatibility mask which hides certain CPU features, you can do so by using the vSphere API and accessing either the FeatureRequirement or FeatureMask properties, depending if Per-VM EVC is configured or not. The results from the vSphere API is a list of CPUID strings that may or may not be easy to translate to the friendly CPU processor feature name.

While doing some testing, I noticed that for VMs configured with Per-VM EVC, rather than listing out the CPUID strings, it actually lists the friendly CPU processor feature name.


I was not able to find any CPUID translator using the EvcManager API, but the vSphere UI must be getting this information somehow, right? After a bit of poking around in my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), I realized how this translation was occurring ...

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Quick Tip - Certificate is not trusted when importing signed OVF/OVA into vCenter Server

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An OVF/OVA can be digitally signed by a vendor to ensure its authenticity and when importing it into vCenter Server, the vSphere UI will either display that it contains a valid certificate or the certificate is not trusted as demonstrated in the example below:


If you are using a self-signed TLS certificate to sign an OVF/OVA, then it is expected that it would not be trusted by the Root Certificate Authority (CA) stored within the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA).

However, if you have a valid TLS certificate that has been issued from a trusted certificate authority to sign an OVF/OVA, would you still see the error message? The answer actually surprised me.

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